Why christ is the only way

By means of his atoning death salvation is made available as a gift to be received by faith. The logic of the New Testament is clear: The universality of sin and uniqueness of Christ's atoning death entail that there is no salvation apart from Christ.

This particularistic doctrine was just as scandalous in the polytheistic world of the Roman Empire as in contemporary Western culture. Early Christians were therefore often subjected to severe persecution, torture, and death because of their refusal to embrace a pluralistic approach to religions. In time, however, as Christianity grew to supplant the religions of Greece and Rome and became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the scandal receded. Indeed, for medieval thinkers like Augustine and Aquinas, one of the marks of the true Church was its catholicity, that is, its universality.

To them it seemed incredible that the great edifice of the Christian Church, filling all of civilization, should be founded on a falsehood. Through the travels and voyages of men like Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, and Ferdinand Magellan, new civilizations and whole new worlds were discovered which knew nothing of the Christian faith.

The realization that much of the world lay outside the bounds of Christianity had a two-fold impact upon people's religious thinking. First, it tended to relativize religious beliefs. It was seen that far from being the universal religion of mankind, Christianity was largely confined to Western Europe, a corner of the globe. No particular religion, it seemed, could make a claim to universal validity; each society seemed to have its own religion suited to its peculiar needs.

Second, it made Christianity's claim to be the only way of salvation seem narrow and cruel. Enlightenment rationalists like Voltaire taunted the Christians of his day with the prospect of millions of Chinamen doomed to hell for not having believed in Christ, when they had not so much as even heard of Christ. In our own day, the influx into Western nations of immigrants from former colonies and the advances in telecommunications which have served to shrink the world to a global village have heightened our awareness of the religious diversity of mankind.

As a result religious pluralism has today become once again the conventional wisdom. But what, exactly, is the problem supposed to be which is posed by mankind's religious diversity? And for whom is this supposed to be a problem?

When one reads the literature on this issue, the recurring challenge seems to be laid at the doorstep of the Christian particularist. The phenomenon of religious diversity is taken to imply the truth of pluralism, and the main debate then proceeds to the question of which form of pluralism is the most plausible.

But why think that Christian particularism is untenable in the face of religious diversity? What exactly seems to be the problem? When one examines the arguments on behalf of pluralism, one finds many of them to be almost textbook examples of logical fallacies. For example, it is frequently asserted that it is arrogant and immoral to hold to any doctrine of religious particularism because one must then regard all persons who disagree with one's own religion as mistaken.

This appears to be a textbook example of the logical fallacy known as argument ad hominem , which is trying to invalidate a position by attacking the character of those who hold to it. This is a fallacy because the truth of a position is independent of the moral qualities of those who believe it. Even if all Christian particularists were arrogant and immoral, that would do nothing to prove that their view is false.

Not only that, but why think that arrogance and immorality are necessary conditions of being a particularist.

Am I therefore arrogant and immoral for believing what I sincerely think is true? Finally, and even more fundamentally, this objection is a double-edged sword. For the pluralist also believes that his view is right and that all those adherents to particularistic religious traditions are wrong. Or to give another example, it is frequently alleged that Christian particularism cannot be correct because religious beliefs are culturally relative. For example, if a Christian believer had been born in Pakistan, he would likely have been a Muslim.

Therefore his belief in Christianity is untrue or unjustified. But this again seems to be a textbook example of what is called the genetic fallacy. This is trying to invalidate a position by criticizing the way a person came to hold that position. The fact that your beliefs depend upon where and when you were born has no relevance to the truth of those beliefs. If you had been born in ancient Greece, you would probably have believed that the sun orbits the Earth. Does that imply that your belief that the Earth orbits the sun is therefore false or unjustified?

Evidently not! And once again, the pluralist pulls the rug from beneath his own feet: for had the pluralist been born in Pakistan, then he would likely have been a religious particularist. Thus, on his own analysis his pluralism is merely the product of his being born in late twentieth century Western society and is therefore false or unjustified.

Thus, some of the arguments against Christian particularism frequently found in the literature are pretty unimpressive. Nevertheless, I find that when these objections are answered by defenders of Christian particularism, then the real issue does tends to emerge. That issue, I find, concerns the fate of unbelievers outside one's own particular religious tradition.

Christian particularism consigns such persons to hell, which pluralists take to be unconscionable. But what exactly is the problem here supposed to be? What is the difficulty with holding that salvation is available only through Christ? Is it supposed to be simply the allegation that a loving God would not send people to hell? The Bible says that God wills the salvation of every human being.

Or again, "He desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" 1 Tim. So God speaks through the prophet Ezekiel:. For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone,' says the Lord God. Say to them, "As I live," says the Lord God, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways.

For why will you die? Here God literally pleads with people to turn back from their self-destructive course of action and be saved. Thus, in a sense, the biblical God does not send any person to hell.

His desire is that everyone be saved, and He seeks to draw all persons to Himself. If we make a free and well-informed decision to reject Christ's sacrifice for our sin, then God has no choice but to give us what we deserve.

God will not send us to hell—but we shall send ourselves. Our eternal destiny thus lies in our own hands. It is a matter of our free choice where we shall spend eternity. The lost, therefore, are self-condemned; they separate themselves from God despite God's will and every effort to save them, and God grieves over their loss.

Now the pluralist might admit that given human freedom God cannot guarantee that everyone will be saved. Some people might freely condemn themselves by rejecting God's offer of salvation. But, he might argue, it would be unjust of God to condemn such people forever. For even terrible sins like those of the Nazi torturers in the death camps still deserve only a finite punishment.

Therefore, at most hell could be a sort of purgatory, lasting an appropriate length of time for each person before that person is released and admitted into heaven. Eventually hell would be emptied and heaven filled. Thus, ironically, hell is incompatible, not with God's love, but with His justice. The objection charges that God is unjust because the punishment does not fit the crime. For the objection seems flawed in at least two ways:.

We could agree that every individual sin which a person commits deserves only a finite punishment. But it does not follow from this that all of a person's sins taken together as a whole deserve only a finite punishment. If a person commits an infinite number of sins, then the sum total of all such sins deserves infinite punishment. Now, of course, nobody commits an infinite number of sins in the earthly life.

But what about in the afterlife? Insofar as the inhabitants of hell continue to hate God and reject Him, they continue to sin and so accrue to themselves more guilt and more punishment.

In a real sense, then, hell is self-perpetuating. In such a case, every sin has a finite punishment, but because sinning goes on forever, so does the punishment. Well, she heard it, and as I anticipated she exploded in fury, and she said something to this effect, she was enraged, she said, "that is the most bigoted, narrow-minded, arrogant statement I have ever heard.

How can you think that Jesus Christ is the only way to God? And I said, "Well, here's my problem. I'm as American as you are. I'm not looking for some narrow view of things.

And then I read in the New Testament that this One, of whom I'm persuaded was the Son of God, opened His mouth and said things like this: 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except by Me. When Jesus says "no man comes to the Father except by Me," He's eliminated all other possible options.

Jesus, this same Jesus said, "I am the door through which men must enter. The rest are hirelings. All of the others are thieves and robbers trying to violently break into My Father's kingdom where they have no right. And if He's dead wrong when He claims to be the only way, I'd be foolish to think that He's even one way. Few of us would wish to be treated by relativistic doctors — we want someone who will tell it like it is!

Relativism simply doesn't hold water and it is worth pointing out to our friends that it is impossible to live out relativism in our daily lives. A look at some biblical passages will help. Jesus and the apostles certainly did not hold to relativism — for them Jesus was either Lord of all or not at all.

That Jesus is the only way is asserted by Jesus himself: 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. This claim is often made by Muslims — and of course it is true — nowhere does Jesus assert his divinity in these exact words. It should also be noted, however, that nowhere does he state the converse: 'I'm not God — don't worship me!

Yet having said this, the divinity of Jesus is in fact directly stated in at least eight passages of the New Testament For example, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God' [12] and also, 'Thomas said to him, 'My Lord and my God!

The fact is that Jesus was far too sophisticated a teacher to wander round shouting 'I am God! Instead he made his claims in ways that were deeply rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures and therefore unmistakable to his Jewish listeners. For instance, he said and did things that in Scripture only God said and did:. Perhaps his most provocative title was his favourite, the 'Son of Man', mentioned over 80 times in the Gospels.

We can tell from the reactions people had to Jesus, that there was no doubt about what he was claiming. They either worshipped him [27] or accused him of blasphemy [28]. He was killed because he claimed to be God. Given the Bible's unequivocal claim of Jesus Christ's divinity we cannot say that he was merely a great moral teacher, since a great moral teacher would not lie about his own identity.

There are only four options open to us in considering a man who claims to be God: either he is a liar, a lunatic, a legend or the Lord. Someone who deliberately lied about his identity would be a demonic deceiver and trickster.

Someone who falsely believed himself to be God and told others so would be a deluded lunatic. The third option, that he never existed, or that his followers misinterpreted and distorted what he said, has no historical basis. By exclusion, the only reasonable conclusion is that he was who he claimed to be — the Lord.

As Christians, we must assert on Jesus' own authority that he is both God the Son and the only way to God. Islam — How to Reach Your Neighbour. Nucleus ; October [2] Eg. Is Christianity Evidence-Based? This article is based on material from the popular Confident Christianity course.

Some people say there is no 'truth', each person decides what is true for them.