"Why Believe in Christianity Alone?" - Chapter 10 of "Know Why You Believe"

Know Why You Believe
By K. Scott Oliphint

“Why Believe in Christianity Alone?” – Chapter 10

Introduction

• Christianity is not simply one more religion. It has implications that apply to all of life and the entire world.
• One of the most offensive teachings of Christianity is that belief and eternal life.
• “The Universality of Relativism”
• Relativism and Postmodernism
• Relativism and Religious Pluralism
• Relativism and Tolerance

Reasons

• How should Christians assess these three siblings?
• Do Christians consider themselves a part of this family of siblings?
• Do we see Christianity as true only because we believe it?
• Do we think that Christianity “sees” a limited part of the same elephant that Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and others “see”?
• Is tolerance a proper Christian attitude toward other “truths” and other religions?

Relativism & Christianity

• “Is Christianity true for me, or is it true whether or not I believe it?”
• The truth of Christianity is not dependent on whether or not I believe it. Christianity is true whether it is believed or not believed.
• Subjective vs. Objective Truth
• The Inescapability of Objective Truth
• The “Unlivable” Nature of Relativism.
• What is the best way to understand the world?
  
  • Naturalism?
    
    • Naturalism cannot escape complete relativity.
    • In full relativism, no idea can be intrinsically better than other ideas.
    • Hitler’s fascism and anti-Semitism, Stalin’s communism and barbarism, and the West’s freedom and democracy are all relative.
  • Christian Theism?
    
    • Christian Theism recognizes that truth does not come from within us; it comes from outside of us.
    • All truth originates with God.
    • As creatures of God who are meant to reflect God, who is himself the truth, human beings are supposed to recognize and affirm the truth of who we are (God’s image) and of what the world is (created and sustained by God).
• Truth cannot be relative. There is no way to account for it if it is.
• The only way to account for truth is to see it as something that is both beyond us (because it is in God himself) and is given to us (in God’s revelation).
• That way, we can affirm objective truth and, at the same time, recognize that the truth that we have is, in the first place, not ours, but God’s.

Religious Pluralism & Christianity

• Relativism is the “big brother” of its smaller, more religious sibling, religious pluralism.
• It reasons that we ought to affirm that all religions are at least partly correct because we can only “see,” or “sense,” in a limited way. Religious pluralism recognizes the finitude of human existence.
• Religious pluralism rightly recognizes our limitations in “seeing,” but it does not account for gracious divine revelation.
• Christianity gives a transcendent reason to recognize the world as created, and human beings as specially endowed with God’s image at creation.
• It is a transcendent reason because, as Scripture begins, we recognize that before all things began, God was.
• God, who transcends creation, creates all other things.
• Christ as the only way to God is the story of the whole Bible. It actually begins in the Garden, immediately after the entrance of sin in the world (Genesis 3:15).
• The rest of the Old Testament testifies to this one exclusive Redeemer who will come to solve the problem that people produce and propagate (Luke 24:24-27).
• Christ has been the only way to God since sin entered the world.
• Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)
• No clearer statement of the exclusiveness of Christianity could be given, and it comes in the context of all of Scripture.
• What separates us from God is not that we don’t perform the proper religious functions, or that we don’t live good enough lives.
• What separates us from God is our sin.
• And the only way that our sin can be overcome is if someone takes on the penalty of our sin, including death, and conquers it.
• Only Christ can do that. No one else can.
• “Jesus is…the cornerstone. Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:11-12)

Tolerance & Christianity

• The central question with tolerance is why someone would extol its virtues.
• It is very often thought that the reason we are to be tolerant is because truth is relative. No one religion, or position, is able to describe anything exhaustively.
• We should be tolerant of anyone else’s view because it’s just another version of truth.
• But tolerance doesn’t have to be linked to relativism and religious pluralism.
• Instead, tolerance can be what it is in the context of the exclusive claims of Christianity.
• Christ said that he was the only way to the Father, but he lived a life that was marked by love and compassion, even to his enemies.
• The way of Christianity is a way of tolerance.
• But that tolerance has its roots in the God who made and controls all that is.
• It is a tolerance that has its foundation in God’s comprehensive control of all things, including the fact that his gospel is a gospel that alone brings and produces peace, not war.
• Christianity can hold to the exclusive truth of the gospel while demonstrating love to others.

Responses

• Probably the most prominent response to Christian exclusiveness is some kind of inclusiveness.
• To be so exclusive, some will think, is to exclude so many others and all other religions.
• However, many other religions are equally as exclusive as Christianity (ex. Islam).
• Why can Christianity not just include everyone, in whatever way, who is trying to follow a path?
• Complete inclusivity ultimately leads to complete relativism – no truth is better than any other truth.
• For someone to be truly “inclusive” means that even those who believe that Christianity is exclusive have to be “included” in the universal religion.
• But that is not what those who want to be inclusive believe.
• Those who think that everyone should be included also think that everyone should think that everyone should be included!
• When that is not true, then it turns out that the inclusive person is just as exclusive as the exclusive person.
• In the end, the inclusive person is just as exclusive as the ones they seek to oppose.

Conclusion

• It is important to know—from a Christian perspective eternally important—what, or in whom, we believe.
• The fact that our belief is exclusive is no argument against it. It shows it to be in some ways like beliefs that all people hold.
• The important and central question is not what do I believe and who does it include. The central question is, Is my belief true?
• Christianity says it is true only when it has its focus in Jesus—the One who himself is the Truth.

Questions

• Can you think of a religion or person whose beliefs truly include all people? Why or why not?
• If all people are exclusive in their beliefs, why is Christianity’s exclusiveness so offensive to many people?
• Aside from those given in the book, can you name other examples of God’s tolerance toward those who are his enemies?