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3. Jesus the only way?

"What about Christ?" somebody is sure to ask. "We do share a common humanity in creation. But didn't God become incar­nate in Jesus? Is not Jesus Christ therefore the fullest revelation of God and the savior of all peoples?"

 

In fact, this view, which holds creation as general revelation and Christ as the special or unique revelation, is already pro­jected in the scripture. "In the past", says the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, "God spoke to our ancestors many times and in many ways through the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us through his Son" (Heb. 1:1).

 

St. Paul elaborates on this idea in the opening chapters of his Letter to the Romans. God will punish those who walk in evil, argues Paul, because they already know what is right. "Ever since God created the world, his invisible qualities, both his eternal power and his divine nature, have been clearly seen; they are perceived in the things that God has made. So those people have no excuse at all!" (Rom. 1:20). He goes even further to say that conscience, in the case of the Gentiles, and Law in the case of the Jews, made it possible for people to do what is right. "The Gentiles do not have the Law; but whenever they do by instinct what the Law commands, they are their own law, even though they do not have the Law. Their conduct shows that what the Law commands is written in their hearts. Their consciences also show that this is true since their thoughts sometimes accuse them and sometimes defend them" (Rom. 2:14-15). "But now", Paul continues in chapter 3, "God's way of putting people right through their faith has been revealed... God puts people right through their faith in Jesus Christ" (Rom. 3:21-22).

 

The rest of the Letter to the Romans, and indeed all the letters of Paul, are an attempt to show that God has acted in a decisively saving way in Jesus the Christ, and that one can enter this salvation through faith in him.

 

"If this is the burden of the Christian scriptures, what is the purpose of dialogue? Our task is only one of proclamation, in which we present Jesus the Christ as the savior of the world" -many Christians would claim.

 

Such an understanding is further strengthened by what are generally called the "exclusive verses" in the Bible, which present Christ as unique, and the only way to God and salvation.

 

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For the sake of convenience, let us gather some of the so-called exclusive sayings, before we take a second look at them based on the total teaching presented in the Christian scriptures. Some of these verses have to do with the person of Jesus. For example:

 

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that everyone that believes in him may not die but have eternal life... whoever believes in the Son is not judged; but whoever does not believe has already been judged, because he has not believed in God's only Son (John 3:16,18).

 

Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going; so how can we know the way to get there?" Jesus answered him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one goes to the Father except by me" (John 14:5-6).

 

Some other statements concern the intention of God, and the best illustration is in the Book of Acts. Peter and John are taken to the High Priest, following the healing of a man born blind, and Peter bears a bold witness to Christ:

 

Jesus is the one of whom the scripture says, "The stone that you builders despised turned out to be the most important of all." Salvation is to be found through him alone; in all the world there is no one else whom God has given who can save us (Acts 4:11-12).

 

Finally there are exclusive statements on the nature of the salvation that Jesus is said to have brought.

 

The Letter to the Hebrews argues that Christ's is the last and final sacrifice:

 

So God does away with all the old sacrifices and puts the sacrifice of Christ in their place. Because Jesus Christ did what God wanted him to do, we all are purified from sin by the offering that he made in his own body once and for all (Heb. 10:9-10).

 

Jesus is the one mediator of all humanity, says Paul:

 

...This is good and it pleases God our Savior, who wants everyone to be saved and to come to know the truth. For there is one God, and there is one who brings God and mankind together, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself to redeem all mankind (1 Tim. 2:3-6).

 

What can we say about these claims to uniqueness mat are clearly set forth in such scriptural verses? Can there be any case

 

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for dialogue in view of these unequivocal assertions about the decisiveness and finality of what God has done in Christ?

 

Before we look at these sayings and their meaning, we should turn to the rest of the scripture and see how it relates to them. For it is dangerous to develop a whole theology or missiology based on a few verses. Since most of these texts refer to Jesus, it would be good to turn to Jesus himself and to his teaching as presented in other parts of the scripture.

 

When we consider the Synoptic Gospels, i.e. Matthew, Mark and Luke, we see a Jesus who is somewhat different from the Jesus presented by John. This does not of course mean that the Synoptic Gospels are free of interpretation. Scholars have shown that each of the Gospel writers has a particular purpose in the way he selects, arranges and introduces the stories and teachings of Jesus. It is generally agreed, however, that St John's Gospel takes far more freedom with the material related to Jesus than the others. John, more than the others, shapes the material about Jesus, including what he is said to have taught, in ways that reflect the faith of the early church about the person of Jesus.

 

The most striking fact in the Synoptics is Jesus' own God-centered life. He never calls himself the Son of God, but the son of man. Even more important, Jesus sees his primary function as the initiator of the kingdom of God (Mark 1:14-15; Luke 11:20). He announces the forgiveness that accom­panies the coming of the kingdom, calls persons to repen­tance and challenges them to a profoundly ethical understand­ing of the relationship between God and the human person and between human persons. It is God who offers life to all who enter the kingdom. Jesus' own life is entirely God-centered, God-dependent and God-ward. In the Synoptic envi­ronment, it would be strange if Jesus were to say "I and the father are one," or "I am the way, the truth and the life." There seems to be no claim to divinity or to oneness with God; what we have is the challenge to live lives that are totally turned towards God.

 

It is also of interest that Jesus claims that he has come not to abolish the Law, a claim that Paul and the writer of the Hebrews make later. When challenged that he was breaking the law, Jesus claimed that he was in fact fulfilling the law in its true

 

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intention. He gives the summary of the law as the summary of his own teachings (Deut. 6:4; Lev. 19:18; Mark 12:28-34).

 

While Jesus does urge people to "follow" him, to become his "disciples", to believe in him and what he teaches, he never seems to suggest that he is the mediator, much less the only mediator, between God and the human person. He seems to identify himself more with the suffering servant of Isaiah.

 

We see primarily a teacher, one who tells stories, speaks in parables, and mixes with the despised people. We see one who loves and enjoys ordinary people, the masses.

 

Jesus also seems to place enormous emphasis on the actual life lived and the actual attitudes held, so much more indeed than on what is said or believed. A radical move away from the self towards a God-centered life (life in the kingdom) seems to be the main burden of his teaching. He does not ask people to leave their religious community and follow him. He has a small group of people who are with him most of the time. He has called them to him and asked them to be with him. But he shows no anxiety that everyone should become his immediate follower (Mark 10:38-41).

 

We need not labor this point. All we want to show is that there is another witness to Jesus, different from the one that emerges when all the exclusive sayings are put together, and this witness in some ways stands in contradiction to the Jesus presented in those sayings. It is clear that St John makes use of most of the incidents in the life of Jesus to introduce theological discourses on the significance of Jesus to the faith community of his time.

 

The distinction between the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John should not be overstated. Quite a few scholars claim that all accounts, including the Synoptic accounts, are accounts of faith, molded by the experience of the early church. Some would even claim that we can never know exactly who Jesus was in actual history and what he really taught. Everything has gone through the "factory of faith" and what we have in the Gospel accounts represents what people thought Jesus was, or what they wanted us to believe of him. But most scholars are convinced that the authors of the Synoptic Gospels, although inevitably influenced by their own faith perspective, give us a reasonably reliable account of who Jesus was and what he

 

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taught. Of course, there are those who see no reason why the witness of St. John cannot be as valid as the Synoptics. We need not enter this controversy. We need only to keep in mind the difference in perspective and presentation.

 

What is important to realize, in short, is that there is a "Christ of faith" to whom there is a clear witness in the New Testament. St. Paul and the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, for example, show little or no interest in Jesus' teachings or indeed on his ministry among his own people. They are primarily interested in the "meaning" of Jesus' death and resurrection, and' see no reason why they should not bear testimony to it. It was only natural that the community of faith reflected on the meaning of the Christ-event for their own lives. John appears to be half-way between the Synoptics and Paul in his attempt to bring out this meaning through interpreting the events in the life of Jesus and his teachings. This he does in the light of his own beliefs about Jesus.

 

What does this amount to? Does it mean that John, Paul and the author of the Letter to the Hebrews are not reliable guides to our understanding of who Jesus was? Does this mean that we must discount their testimony that Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ, the mediator, the way, the truth and the life? By no means. John, Paul, Peter and others are all part of the Christian tradition; they tell us what Jesus meant to his immediate followers and to the early church. Their witness is an essential part of the Christian heritage about Jesus and his significance.

 

What we should remember, however, is that these are all statements of faith about Jesus the Christ. They derive their meaning in the context of faith, and have no meaning outside the community of faith. They hold enormous significance for Christian people, today as much as in the past. They were valid for those who confessed Christ in centuries gone by, and they continue to be valid for those of us who belong to that tradition of confession.

 

But we should not assume that these confessions were defini­tive. The scriptures witness to the struggle that the community of faith had to go through in order to understand the significance of Jesus. Many different titles were used for Jesus; many terms, like salvation, reconciliation, new creation, etc., were used to describe what God had done for them in Christ. John even went

 

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to the Jewish Wisdom tradition, and made use of the concept of the eternal word in his attempt to understand and interpret the meaning of the Christ-event.

 

This, then, is the right setting in which to understand the exclusive statements that claim uniqueness for Christ. The claims that the Christ is the only way, the only Savior, the one Mediator, etc., are made in the language of faith, and should be understood within the context of the church's faith-commit­ment.

 

The excessive emphasis on only is part of the early Christian polemics against the Jewish people from whom the Christians were growing out as a separate community. That community was a small one. Its faith was strong and secure, on the one hand; it was constantly under attack, on the other. The commu­nity was under immense pressure to justify its faith in Jesus, the crucified master whom they now experienced as the risen Lord. As much by the logic of the circumstances as by the strength of their convictions, they were led to make claims for Jesus, which he would not perhaps have made for himself.

 

Part of this development is also marked by a significant shift from the theocentric attitude that characterized Jesus' own teaching. Gradually Jesus comes to the centre and God is pushed to the periphery. God is not celebrated as the savior, but Christ is the savior. Our new life is rooted not in God but in Christ. In Christian usage, even the phrase "through Jesus Christ" in our prayers turns out to be prayer to Christ.

 

All these developments are of course understandable; and some of them may well have arisen out of the experience of the faith community that the God whom they knew in creation is the same God whom they encountered in Christ and in their experi­ence of the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity was developed within the church to provide a framework of under­standing to the developing beliefs about Jesus Christ. We should recognize, however, that all these developments are part of the growing faith-perspectives about Jesus and his significance.

 

It may be pointed out that something not entirely dissimilar happened to another historical person, Gautama Buddha. He was a prince who became an ascetic. Through an experience of enlightenment, he found a way, which, he was convinced, was the way by which all human beings might escape the problem of

 

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life and enter a state of bliss. He clearly said that there was no need to know him, believe in him or worship him, but that anyone who saw the true nature of life and followed the way (the Middle Path) could attain Buddha hood and nirvana.

 

Gautama's followers, however, saw in him far more than what he claimed for himself. Today in some branches of Buddhism, Buddha is held to be divine. His previous incarna­tions are described in detail, and as "Lord Buddha”, he has become the centre of veneration, indeed of worship.

 

Many Christians are likely to be offended by such a compari­son. They will feel that either in making it, we are being cynical or indeed, we expose our lack of conviction about Christ.

 

But it need not be so. The comparison is made because I know many Buddhists for whom the conviction about the divinity of the Lord Buddha is so central that they will give their lives to defend it. For them there is nothing mythical about it, and questions of developments within the tradition have nothing to do with it. For them the Buddha is indeed divine, and not anyone who doubts it or fails to recognize it has come to see the truth. They will never accept this as a later accretion. For them it represents the fuller understanding of who the Buddha actu­ally was. And they will find plenty of support for it in their scriptures.

 

Can a Christian turn around and say to the Buddhist that he or she is misguided to think this way about the Lord Buddha? We have no grounds to do so. For the Buddhists, from their perspective, will see an almost parallel development in the teachings of the church about Christ, and they will call in question a number of beliefs about Christ. And yet Christians know how meaningful and central their beliefs are to the community of faith.

 

All this is to say that the exclusive statements about Christ can never be understood unless we recognize the different levels in which language is used, and the different standpoints from which claims are made. Let me illustrate.

 

When my daughter tells me that I am the best daddy in the world, and there can be no other father like me, she is speaking the truth. For this comes out of her experience. She is honest about it; she knows no other person in the role of her father. The affirmation is part and parcel of her being. There are no doubts

 

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about it in her mind. She may be totally disillusioned if she is told that in fact her father is not the best daddy in the world.

 

But of course it is not true in another sense. For one thing, I myself know friends who, I think, are better fathers than I am. Even more importantly, one should be aware that in the next house there is another little girl who also thinks that her daddy is the best father in the whole world. And she too is right. In fact at the level of the way the two children relate to their fathers, no one from outside can compare the two fathers and say which one of them is a better father. It is impossible to compare the truth content of the statements of the two girls. For here, we are dealing not with absolute truths, but with the language of faith and love.

 

This does not of course mean that there are no objective ways of finding out whether a person is fulfilling the role of father in a faithful way. We cannot assert that there are no objective criteria to distinguish a good father from a bad one, and that is only subjective experience on which to rely.

 

But that will make no difference to the child's claim about the father and the exclusive language in which that claim will be expressed. Within the child's experience, and in the child's world, the claim will be an absolute one.

 

The language of the Bible is also the language of faith. Whether we are speaking about the chosen people, or about Jesus as the only way, we are expressing a relationship that has profound meaning and significance for us. We do not say it lightly, for such belief is at the heart of our whole experience. But we should never claim that such beliefs are formulated or held to discredit other beliefs. They express our own convic­tions, even as other beliefs express the convictions others have.

 

The problem begins when we take these confessions in the language of faith and love and turn them into absolute truths. It becomes much more serious when we turn them into truths based on which we begin to measure the truth or otherwise of other faith-claims. My daughter cannot say to her little friend in the next house that there is no way that she can have the best father, for the best one is right there in her house. If she does, we will have to dismiss it as child-talk!

 

In some theological circles, this way of understanding the Christian claims about Christ will be frowned upon and looked

 

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at with great suspicion. This, they will claim, relativizes the faith. Still others will say that if the absolute claims for Christ are not objective truths, but only the claims of faith, then we have nothing to hold on to. Christianity will then be reduced to a purely subjective experience. They will say that what we believe in should be true independent of our belief or experi­ence. In their view, the claims to uniqueness for Christ must be a matter of fact and not merely a confession of faith.

 

One can understand such anxiety, but the view takes little account of actual human limitations on the one hand and the nature of absolute truth on the other. Truth in the absolute sense is beyond anyone's grasp, and we should not say that the Christian claims about Jesus are absolute because St John, St Paul and the scriptures make them. There will be others who make similar claims based on authorities they set for themsel­ves. Such claims to absolute truth lead only to intolerance and arrogance and to unwarranted condemnation of each other’s faith-perspectives.

 

On the other hand, there is no reason why one should not make a full and sincere commitment based on a faith-claim or a truth-claim based on faith. That is the essence of having "faith"; it is based not on certain knowledge but on the certainty of faith itself.

 

The insistence on absolute and objective truth comes from certain cultural and philosophical traditions that are alien to the Bible. For what we have in the Bible are not attempts to project objective truths, but a struggle to understand, to celebrate, to witness and to relate. There are in the Bible many traditions, many movements, many pictures, many confessions and many claims. Sometimes they are complementary; at other times, they are at variance with each other. But what emerges is a story of genuine faith and the celebration of that faith in convinced witness.

 

Such an understanding of the biblical witness, and especially of those exclusive verses which have often been treated as absolute truths and used to deny the faiths of others, will free us as faithful people to be in dialogue with other faithful people. For truth, when understood this way, can only be shared. There is nothing to defend, nothing to thrust upon others, nothing to "sell". It may well be that persons of other faiths are likely to be

 

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impressed more by those who, in humility, are prepared to share their spiritual struggles and their witness of faith than by those who claim to have objective truth beyond debate and dispute.

 

There are those who would claim that the Christian claims to absolute truth are not based on the power of the human person to know, but on the revelation given by God. But this solves nothing. For most religions, like Islam and Hinduism, are also based on the concept of revelation; and throughout history different persons have claimed to have various revelations from God. Revelation itself is part of the faith-claim, and its validity also has to do with the faith of the community.

 

It is therefore very important that Christians recognize the nature of biblical faith and its language, and relate to others, in the conviction that others too have a witness to offer. Exclusive claims, presented as absolute truths, only result in alienation. They are not the proverbial "stone of stumbling" but obstacles that are placed in the way of people, which prevent them from knowing Jesus whose life was marked by self-giving.

 

In fact, Christians are called in the Bible not to make claims, but to make a commitment that opens their lives to others. And others also have their commitments. Dialogue thus is an encounter of commitments. It is in this encounter that people are able to see and hear the witness we have to offer to one another.