CHRISTIANITY
Islam
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Judaism
What does the religion teach about people who follow other
faiths?
by Kendra Hotz
Christians
affirm that people of other faiths are the beloved creatures of
God, made in the image of God. Christian theology, moreover, affirms
that God is revealed to all people through nature and reason. This
universal human knowledge of God is known as general revelation,
and it accounts for why people worldwide practice religion and pray
to God or to gods.
Nature
points toward its creator, though human beings may misunderstand
or misinterpret it and find themselves worshiping idols and false
gods rather than the true God. In spite of this propensity to misinterpret
nature and to use our reason imperfectly, all people may come to
know that God exists and is good. Beyond this general knowledge
of God’s existence and goodness, Christians also affirm that
God is known by all to be just. God has implanted within all people
a sense of morality, a “natural law” that guides them
in right behavior and forms the foundation of a universal human
ethic. For this reason, even those who have no knowledge of the
Christian faith know, for example, that murder is wrong, that parents
should care for their children, and that the powerful should protect
the defenseless.
General
revelation ensures that God is known as creator and that the justice
God requires is known to all. But Christians
believe that general revelation does not provide knowledge sufficient
for salvation. From nature and the use of reason
one could not know that Jesus Christ is God incarnate who lived,
died, and rose for human salvation. This knowledge comes through
what is known as special revelation, the way in which God is revealed
for salvation especially through the history of Israel, in the life
of Christ, and in scripture as it witnesses to these events. Because
these truths must be learned from the witness of scripture or from
Christian believers, Christians place a high value on evangelism
and missionary activity to spread word of the gospel with the hope
that members of other religious traditions will hear and believe
the good news of salvation.
Christians
regard the Jewish faith differently from other faith traditions.
Christianity regards itself as the natural continuation of the faith
of the children of Israel. The God of the Old Testament is the only
true God. The promises God made to the children of Israel are fulfilled
in Jesus Christ. In this sense, Christians regard their faith as
having superceded Judaism. This supercessionism can lead Christians
to adopt an arrogant attitude toward Jews, whom they regard as stubbornly
refusing to recognize that Christianity is the true meaning of the
Jewish faith.
Other
Christians, however, have acknowledged that God’s faithfulness
to all generations means that God will keep all of the promises
made to the Jewish people regardless of whether they come to faith
in Christ. Especially after the holocaust, many Christians have
called into question the supercessionist view of the relationship
between Christianity and Judaism. Christians also acknowledge a
special relationship with Islam because Muslims worship the same
God as Jews and Christians, but differ with both Jews and Muslims
in their interpretation of who Jesus is.
Christians
believe that salvation comes only through Christ. Yet some Christians
also affirm that God may redeem people of other faiths even if they
do not convert to Christianity. There are at least
three different ways in which Christians have thought about the
salvation of non-Christians.
The
first position, known as exclusivism, is probably best known and
most widely believed. The exclusivist position holds that salvation
is exclusively for those who explicitly confess Jesus Christ as
savior. The Gospel of John says that “God so loved the world
that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him
may not perish but have eternal life” (3:16). According to
the exclusivist position, this means that people of other faiths
cannot be redeemed unless they come to believe in Christ and convert
to Christianity.
Exclusivists
do not necessarily believe that all non-Christians are consigned
to everlasting suffering in hell; there is an alternate way of thinking
about what it means to “perish.” Some have articulated
a view known as annihilationism, the view that God simply unmakes
those who are not redeemed. They understand hell to mean life apart
from God, and since life is only possible in God, those who do not
come to God through Christ are annihilated; they cease to exist
and, therefore, experience neither the joy of everlasting life in
God nor suffering of any kind.
Karl
Rahner, a 20th century Roman Catholic theologian, articulated a
second way of thinking about the salvation of non-Christians. His
position has been described as inclusivism. Rahner
argued that salvation comes only through Christ, but that those
of other faith traditions may be redeemed in Christ without being
aware that Christ is the agent of their redemption. Christ
may work redemptively in other religions so that people who practice
those religions faithfully may objectively encounter Christ without
being subjectively aware of it. He called the redeemed of other
faith traditions “anonymous Christians.”
Nevertheless,
Rahner insisted that anyone who has an “existentially real”
encounter with the Christian faith cannot be redeemed outside of
it. In other words, once a person becomes subjectively aware of
Christ as the agent of redemption, no religion other than Christianity
can convey saving grace. In this way Rahner made room for the possibility
that God redeems those who have never had the opportunity to hear
the gospel.
Universalism
constitutes a third way in which Christians have thought about the
possibility of salvation for non-Christians. Universalism
means simply that God redeems all people. Universalists point to
passages of scripture such as I Corinthians 15:21-22, which says
that “since death came through a human being, the resurrection
of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die
in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.”
Some
universalists would insist that God is ultimately sovereign over
all creation, and that the nature of God is loving and gracious
so that ultimately no aspect of creation will escape God’s
sovereign grace. Others would leave open the possibility that everyone
is redeemed, without positively affirming it, because they wish
to respect God’s freedom to act in whatever way God sees fit
and to redeem whomever God pleases. Finally, many Christians simply
leave the question of the salvation of non-Christians to the mystery
of the divine will, trusting that God will always be both merciful
and just.
Copyright
©2006 Kendra Hotz
Kendra
G. Hotz serves as Adjunct Professor of Theology at Memphis
Theological Seminary. She formerly taught at Calvin College. Hotz
is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and coauthor
(with Matthew T. Mathews) of Shaping
the Christian Life: Worship and the Religious Affections
(2006) and coauthor of Transforming
Care: A Christian Vision of Nursing Practice (2005).
Excerpts
from What Do Our Neighbors Believe?: Questions and Answers on
Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Howard Greenstein, Kendra
Hotz, and John Kaltner are used by permission from Westminster John
Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky. The book will be available for
purchase in December 2006.
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