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Please note:
This our
guest article for the month of September 2005, but Emmaus
Ministry is in the process of seeking permission from Rev. Ken Allen at Auburn
University for permission to keep it on this website.
It is a fact that we live in
a religiously plural world and more and more people, in their daily lives, are
interacting with people of faiths that differ from their own. The following
questions are of major concern and interest to many people of all faiths, and
especially to Christians, living in our world today.
"Does God reveal himself exclusively through one
religion, or does He manifest Himself in other ways?"
"How does Christianity relate to other religions?"
"Are all peoples of other faiths eternally lost?"
We hope to
answer these and other related questions below.
"Inclusive
Christianity" affirms the presence of God's will and power to save in
non-Christian religions while still maintaining that Christ is the definitive
and authoritative revelation of God. It couples the Christian's confession of
Jesus Christ with genuine openness to the truth and goodness found in other
religions. God being revealed definitively in Jesus Christ does not imply that
He is not working in the wider world and in other religions.3
Interfaith individuals,
ministers, and ministries are advocates of the absolute right to freedom of
religion. They affirm the truth in all religions, faiths and spiritual
traditions. They are each rooted in their own faith, yet recognize the
universality of the teachings, values and, above all, the experience of the
Sacred common to all authentic spiritual traditions, and which are at the heart
of true service.
The Rev. Carol E. Parrish,
speaking of "Interfaith Christians," has stated it this way:
"An Interfaith
Christian stands clearly within one's own faith, but respectfully honors all
other world religions for contributions they make to the lives of humanity.
Building
upon the area of sameness, we discover that, rather than amplifying the
differences, we grow in an appreciation of the different histories, art, music,
and culture.
We
realize once again God loves to garden and creation blooms in a wide variety of
ways."5
What is Inclusive Christianity?
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(Unless
otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the World
English Bible)
Peter opened his mouth and said, "Truly I perceive that God
doesn't show favoritism; but in every nation he who fears
[reverences] him and works righteousness is acceptable
to him (Acts 10:34-35).
"Inclusive
Christianity" is the view upholding Christ as the Savior of humanity but
also affirming God's saving presence in the wider world and in other religions.2
Some Inclusive Christians
see a distinction between believers and Christians. All Christians are believers
but not all believers are Christians. Believers are those who are saved because
they have faith in God. A Christian is a believer who knows about and
participates in the work of Christ.
Also, many Inclusive
Christians believe that an act of faith, i.e. trusting God, is essential for
salvation. They believe that God is working toward the salvation of all people
and makes salvation universally accessible even though not all hear about Jesus
before death. "If the redemption procured by Jesus objectively provides for
the salvation of every human being, and if God intends this salvation to be
genuinely universal, then it must be possible for every individual who has ever
lived personally to receive that salvation regardless of the historical era,
geographic region, or cultural setting in which these people have lived." 4.
To state it another way,
Inclusive Christians believe that the living God saves all who believe in him
and that the specific content of saving faith may vary so long as it is grounded
in an essential trust in God.
J.N.D. Anderson says:
"Where in Scripture do we have the exact amount of knowledge require (for
salvation) set out? For assurance, no doubt, knowledge is required, but
for grace it is not so much knowledge as a right attitude towards God that
matters" ("Christianity and Comparative Religion", Downers
Grove, Ill.: Inter Varsity Press, 1977, p. 99).
John Milton, said: "The
ultimate object of faith is not Christ, the Mediator, but God the Father . . .
So it does not seem surprising that there are a lot of Jews, and Gentiles too,
who are saved although they believed or believe in God alone, either because
they lived before Christ, or because, even though they have lived after him, he
has not been revealed to them. In spite of this they are saved by means of
Christ" (John Milton, "Christian Doctrine")
The early Church Fathers
were aware of the plurality of religions surrounding them, and yet they did not
shy away from claiming that the god of the pagan was the same God the
Christians worshiped. (Even Augustine stated that "their God is also our
God" City of God, 19:22) They did criticize many of the worship
practices of the pagans, however; not all ways of worshiping God were considered
edifying, holy, and legitimate. These early Christians rejected many of the ways
the pagans worshiped but not who they worshiped. 4
Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote
in his book, "Dear Mr. Brown, Letters to a Person Perplexed About
Religion", pp. 110-113, the following:
Let's see if we can agree
on certain basic attitudes toward the problem presented by the world's various
faiths. First, you would agree, would you not, that we cannot accept the
traditional, orthodox notion that, if Christianity is true, then all other
faiths are false? This white vs. black division of the world's religions --
Christianity true, all the others false -- is faced at once by the question,
which Christianity are you talking about? Roman Catholicism or Christian
Science, Eastern Orthodoxy or Mormonism, Anglicanism or The Society of Friends,
and so on through more than two hundred Protestant sects in the United States --
which kind of Christianity is the one true religion? . . . .
Moreover,
this attitude -- Christians saved, all others damned -- runs into head-on
collision with the whole concept of God in the New Testament as the merciful
Father of all mankind whose will is that not a single "one of these little
ones should be lost." I remember sermons in my boyhood whose logical
conclusion would be that Socrates and Plato, Moses and Jeremiah, Buddha and
Confucius, were all in hell. That seems to me stark blasphemy against the
character of God. . . . . . .
Fosdick goes on to write:
Having written this,
however, I wonder whether we can now agree on a second matter -- namely, that
what we have said does not mean that one religion is just as good and
true as another. No one could think that unless he first believed that
the whole realm of spiritual truths and values is illusory, so that it makes no
difference one way or another what anyone thinks about it. Here, let us say, is
a primitive tribe where illness is attributed to demonic possession or
witchcraft, and where cure is sought by magic spells. Is that just as good as
modern scientific medicine? Or here is a primitive agriculture, faithfully
carried on in utter disregard of soil conservation, rotation of crops, and all
modern techniques. Of course, that is not just as good as scientific
agriculture. That is to say, wherever we think we are dealing with realities, we
do have to distinguish between better and worse ways of conceiving them and
dealing with them. So, because God and man's spiritual life are so real to me, I
cannot suppose that utterly different ways of conceiving them are equally true.
This need not involve any arrogant supposition that I know the whole truth, nor
any unfriendly condescension, but it does mean the necessity of discrimination
between better and worse in religion.
Clark
Pinnock wrote in "A
Wideness in God's Mercy," page 105:
According
to the Bible, persons can relate to God in three ways and covenants: through the
cosmic covenant established with Noah, through the old covenant made with
Abraham, and through the new covenant ratified by Jesus. One may even speak of
salvation in the broad sense in all three circumstances. That is, insofar as
salvation connotes a relationship with God, there is salvation for people in all
three of the covenants. Of course, there is a more complete saving knowledge of
God in the new covenant than in the old, and more in the old than in the cosmic
covenant, but a relationship with God is possible in the context of all three
covenants. In all three, God justifies Jews and Gentiles on the ground of faith,
the condition for salvation in all dispensations (Ro 3:30).
Faith
is what pleases God. The fact that God accepts different kinds of believers
proves that the issue for God is not the content of theology by the reality of
faith.
BY FAITH ... Abel ... Enoch ... WITHOUT FAITH IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO BE
WELL PLEASING TO HIM, FOR HE WHO COMES TO GOD MUST BELIEVE THAT HE EXISTS, AND
THAT HE IS A REWARDER OF THOSE WHO SEEK HIM.
BY FAITH, Noah ... Abraham ... Sarah ... Jacob ... Esau ... Joseph
... Moses ... Rahab ... Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the
prophets ... These all, having had testimony given to them through their faith,
didn't receive the promise, God having provided some better thing concerning us,
SO THAT APART FROM US THAY SHOULD NOT BE MADE PERFECT.
(See Hebrews 11)
Therefore let us also, seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud
of witnesses, lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us,
and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, LOOKING TO JESUS,
THE AUTHOR AND PERFECTER OF FAITH ...
(Heb. 12:1-2)
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There is salvation in none other,
[human]
for neither is there any other name
UNDER heaven, that is given among men, in which we must be saved!
(Acts 4:12) |
It is true that there is no
other name UNDER heaven in which we must be saved, but there is also God IN
heaven that anyone can call upon in faith and be saved.
Peter opened
his mouth and said, "Truly I perceive that God doesn't show favoritism; but
in every nation he who fears [reverences] him
and works righteousness is acceptable to him (Acts 10:34-35).
Without faith it is impossible to be well pleasing to him, for he
who comes to God must believe that he exists, and that he is a rewarder of those
who seek him. (Heb. 6:11)
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Jesus said to him, "I
am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, but by
me" (John 14:6) |
Robert Brow, an Anglican
(Episcopal) Priest and an Inclusive Christian, was asked, "How can you
believe the exclusive words of Jesus: 'no one comes to the father but by me'
(John 14:6)?
He replied:
"Before explaining
how I understand those words, I have to reject what is often added to this
statement. Some evangelists tell us that no one can be saved unless they hear
about the death of Christ, believe he died for them, repent, and make a decision
to accept Jesus as personal savior. If that was true then we would have to
consign to eternal damnation Abraham, newborn children, retarded persons, the
ignorant, and all people born into other religions. None of them could make a
decision to accept Jesus as personal savior.
"What
the text actually says is that every single person who is taken through death to
enjoy the Father's heaven will discover that he or she only got there through
the personal intervention of the Son of God." [See his complete
answer by clicking here]
As Jesus stated,
"No one comes to the Father but by me" is true. Anyone that comes to the Father, anyone that has access to the
Father, is by FAITH and is assured by the universal result of Christ's
redemption for EVERYONE. "For
there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
WHO GAVE HIMSELF A RANSOM FOR ALL; the testimony in its own times"
(1 Tim. 2:5-6)
Jesus told us to believe in
Him, but He told us to have faith in God.
Don't let your
heart be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me (John
14:1).
Jesus
answering said to them, "Have faith in God"
(Mark 11:22).
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men
(Titus 2:11)
When all things have been subjected to him, then the Son will also
himself be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that GOD MAY BE ALL
IN ALL (1 Cor. 15:28).
What is Interfaith?
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Interfaith is a
bridge.. That allows members of all
religions and spiritual teachings to reach out across the waters of life, in
understanding and communication with each other. Interfaith affirms and supports
the underlying goodness of each person, the healing of our planet.
Interfaith
does not seek to homogenize religious differences.
Rather, it honors the sacredness and uniqueness of each faith, and then creates
ways by which the many paths can meet on common ground or unite in a new and
sacred creative form. Differences between various religions and philosophies
need not divide and separate but can instead enrich our lives and deepen our
capacity to love.
Interfaith
provides a structure whereby
individuals of different faiths can dialogue and share their experiences, making
a safe place to accept and learn about each other. As fluid, mobile societies
and instantaneous communication change the cultural landscape of our world, this
structure becomes vital.
Interfaith
also speaks to those who feel alienated from mainstream religions.
By providing a spirit of openness and resources for change, interfaith
encourages these individuals and groups to discover new ways to worship and to
participate in the meaningful ceremonies of life.
The
pace of social and personal transformation quickens
as our world approaches the Millennium. We all have a part to play in the
unfolding story. Through interfaith, each person contributes to the whole while
fulfilling his or her own unique role. 1
