It surely is no exaggeration to say that for many people nowadays atheism is scarcely any longer a viable creed. The difficulty that keeps people from abandoning it altogether, however, is their uncertainty as to what creed they could satisfactorily put in its place. It is not self-evident to them that the obvious alternative to atheism is Christianity. Granted that the only alternative to atheism is to believe in a god of some sort: but why, they ask themselves, must that be the God of Christianity? Why not Shiva, Vishnu, Rama, Krishna or any one or all of the multitudinous gods of Hinduism? Or Allah, the one and only God of Islam? Or could indeed Theravada Buddhism be the most attractive alternative to atheism? Unlike Mahayana Buddhism, which believes in ten thousand and one deities, Theravada Buddhism is not, strictly speaking, a religion at all, but a philosophy which does not believe in any god whatever. Nonetheless it offers its adherents a body of doctrine (the [p 46] Three Pitakas) and a set of disciplines calculated to deliver them from the tyranny of their desires and to lead them into a way of life increasingly free from turmoil, stress, and fear and into peaceful relations with their fellow men and women.
Then again, the purpose of all religion, so many people feel, is to produce acceptable behaviour. What therefore does it matter, they say, which particular system you choose, so long as you follow the precepts of your chosen religion consistently and sincerely? If the moral goal is the same, what does it matter from what direction and by what path one climbs the mountain? You get to the same summit in the end. Do not all the spokes of a wheel lead to the hub? As George Bernard Shaw put it: ‘There is only one religion in the world, though there are a hundred versions of it.’9 Do not, then, all religions lead to God?
What religions say about themselves
However, not all the individual religions will agree that they are simply alternative routes to the same goal. The Buddha claimed that, ‘there is one sole way for the purification of human beings’10 and that, ‘truth is one, there is not a second.’11 Monotheistic Judaism will never agree with Hinduism that there are millions of gods. And Christianity will say to monotheistic Judaism and Islam that there is no name under heaven given amongst men other than the [p 47] name of Jesus by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). To many people these mutually exclusive claims to uniqueness seem arrogant and dangerously out of place in the global village which the world has become. Would it not then be best for an ex-atheist to follow the eclectic philosophy of the New Age Movement, taking what he likes out of all religions, and combining elements of animism, nature worship, pantheism and Christian morality into one pragmatic amalgam? New Age, denying the objective existence of truth, can accommodate almost any religious belief—provided that belief makes no absolute claims for itself.
Cogent as all this may seem, however, we must be on our guard lest its very attractiveness is an illusion unsupported by the facts.
Take first the contention that it does not matter which system a person follows provided that person is sincere. In no other department of life would any responsible person be content to take sincerity as a guarantee of either truth or safety. All forms of medical practice have by definition the same goal, namely the healing of the sick. But not all medicines are equally potent or equally safe. Some medicines have ruinous side effects. Some are poison. We would not be wise to swallow the contents of a bottle indiscriminately simply because the label bore the word ‘medicine’. We all believe in the objectivity of truth where medicine is concerned!
Secondly, even if it were true—and it is not—that the chief aim of all religions is to get people to behave well towards one another, it would not be safe to suppose without further investigation that behaving well towards one another is a sufficient goal to aim at. In centuries gone [p 48] by, the seas of the world were sailed by many pirate ships. In some of those ships the pirates doubtless behaved very well towards one another and had rigorous and well-kept rules to ensure that the booty they captured was fairly shared out. In that sense they may well have been satisfied with the standard of morality they had achieved. But that would have overlooked the fundamental fact that they were pirates in rebellion against the lawful government on land! If that government had caught them, their morality would not have saved them from hanging. To suppose that the chief aim of religion is to get us to behave well towards one another overlooks the question as to whether there is a supreme being, a Creator who made us, to whom we owe allegiance and who will call us to account for our disloyalty and neglect of him. If there is such a supreme being and we have ignored him and broken his laws, it will be no excuse when he calls us to account, to plead that we have behaved well towards our fellow human beings. And here there is an unbridgeable chasm between, say, Theravada Buddhism on the one hand and Christianity on the other. To the Theravada Buddhists, man in his eternal essence, is the greatest spiritual presence in the universe.12 In Judaism and Christianity, for a man to adopt that attitude about himself is tantamount to blasphemy. For them, man is certainly made in the image of God; but man is not God. God remains the greatest spiritual reality; and for man to usurp his place is the height of rebellion against the Most High.
Moreover there is another irreconcilable difference between religions like Hinduism and Buddhism on the one [p 49] hand and Judaism and Christianity on the other. The former pair maintain that the material world is an illusion (maya) and that the wise man’s true goal is to escape from the material world into an immaterial nirvana. Judaism and Christianity flatly deny that. They affirm that the material creation as it left the Creator’s hand was good, that our material bodies were likewise good; and though spoiled by sin, they will one day be physically resurrected. Here then are two irreconcilably opposed worldviews. It would be a sign of very shallow thinking to suppose that one could take the best out of them both and put it together. And it will obviously make an enormous difference to a man’s attitude to the world around him and even to his own body, which of the two views he adopts.
Religions and the problem of guilt
It is true of course that when it comes to the basic precepts of morality—honouring one’s parents, doing no murder, etc.—all religions teach more or less the same. Compare, for example, the Five Precepts of Buddhism with the Ten Commandments of Judaism. In a word, religions teach us that we ought to be good. But our trouble is that we have not been good. We have sinned against God, broken his laws, and incurred their penalties. We have sinned against our fellow men and women and done them damage. We have sinned against ourselves; and if we are indeed God’s creatures, then to sin against our fellow men and against ourselves is also a grievous sin against God. Human beings are so made that when they have sinned against God and their fellow men, they develop a guilty conscience [p 50] which wrecks their peace of mind and haunts them like a skeleton in the cupboard. To enter into peace, to face the future with confidence, they must be able to get rid of that guilty conscience. Thus any religion worthy of the name must deal with this question of guilt. But how? It is worse than useless to attempt to get rid of guilt from the conscience by telling men and women that their past sin and guilt do not matter. For in the end that would mean that the people against whom they have sinned do not matter, the damage they have done does not matter, and that conscience is a mere weakness of character that can conveniently be suppressed with impunity. No paradise could ever be built on a theory like this which implies that in the end human beings do not matter; though, sadly, the attempt has been made more than once.
Every man and woman urgently needs therefore a solution to this problem that can uphold their moral standards and their sense of justice and at the same time bring them forgiveness and set them justly free from the chains of past guilt.
Here of course the great religions differ and it is no use hiding the fact. Certain forms of Buddhism deny that there is any such thing as forgiveness. Men and women simply have to suffer their inevitable karma of demerit which each individual accumulates for himself throughout his present and past lives, until it is exhausted and they are released into their hoped-for nirvana. They can expect no outside help. ‘No one can purify another.’13 There is only the inexorable operation of the law of cause and effect, [p 51] and any excess of demerit over merit must be worked off in a possibly endless succession of reincarnations.
Some early forms of Hinduism did suggest that forgiveness could be obtained by the offering of ceremonial gifts and sacrifices to the gods. Judaism likewise had an elaborate system of sacrifices on the grounds of which people could find forgiveness from God. But Judaism itself was careful to point out that the sacrificing of bullocks and cows could not possibly be regarded as an adequate solution to the problem of human guilt (Ps 40:6). After all, what do cows know about sin? They do not go to bed at night haunted by a guilty conscience. Moral considerations remain forever above their heads. It is the glory and burden of human beings to be conscious of the demands of morality.
At best, therefore, animal sacrifices were but a symbolic way of acknowledging that the penalty of sin must be paid if conscience is to have rest through forgiveness. Nowadays Judaism has lost even that system of symbols and has nothing to put in its place. In this it resembles Islam that teaches people to cast themselves on the mercy of the Almighty, but cannot point to any sacrifice that can adequately pay the price of sin.
Christ’s unquestionable uniqueness
In this connection Christianity is unique. For although it teaches people to be good, that is not the major thrust of its message. The heart of its message is that God the judge, against whom we have all sinned, has taken upon himself the task of upholding the honour of his law and [p 52] of public justice by providing his Son as a sacrifice to take away the sin of the world. In this Christ is unique. Of all the great founders and leaders of religions he is the only one who will come alongside us claiming to be our Creator incarnate, come to deal with the problem of the guilt of our sin by means of his sacrifice at Calvary so that we may receive forgiveness and peace with God. For example, as H. D. Lewis asserts: ‘. . . and Buddha himself, according to the famous text which describes his disease, disavowed at the time of his death any peculiar claims to be made on his behalf as the instrument of salvation.’14 To ask why we must think that Christ is the only way to God is to miss the point completely. No one else offers to deal with this fundamental problem. Christ is the only one in the running. It is not narrow-mindedness to accept from Christ what nobody else offers!
It is moreover important to be clear about the basic condition on which Christ’s offer is made, for here once more is an area in which Christianity is unique.
Since not all of those who profess Christianity have seen this distinction, we underline it by considering the familiar metaphor which represents religion as a way or a path. In Buddhism it is the ‘Eightfold Path’, or ‘Middle Way’; and from very early times Christianity was known as ‘The Way’. In this scheme of things there is usually a gateway at the beginning through which one must enter, some ritual or experience through which one must pass in order to set out on the way. In many there is also a gate at the end that leads to heaven or nirvana, etc.—although [p 53] the Zen Buddhists claim that enlightenment (satori) is possible in this present life. The idea common to them all is that whether you get through the final gate or not (or, achieve enlightenment along the Path or not) all depends on how you progress along the way—the basic principle is merit. People often think of it in the same way as they do of a university degree. If you wish to gain a degree from a university, you must pass through the necessary entrance examination in order to qualify to enter the university. Unless you pass through that gate, you cannot even begin the university course that you hope will lead to a degree. But entering through that gate at the beginning is no guarantee that you will get a degree at the end of the course. For there is another gate at the end of the course, namely the final examination. Whether you will ever get through that gate will depend on how well you have performed both in the course and in the final examination. The professors will do their best to help you, but even they cannot guarantee that you will pass. In the end it all depends on your merit. You have to earn the degree, and whether you have done enough to earn it cannot be decided until the final examination.
In the popular mind Christianity itself is a religion of this kind. In order to gain salvation and acceptance with God you must first enter through the gate at the beginning of the road, namely the ritual of baptism. Entering that gate puts you in the running for salvation; but of course it doesn’t mean that you are already saved. Whether you ever achieve salvation and acceptance with God depends on passing the examination at the end of the course, namely the final judgment; and passing that final [p 54] judgment must depend on the progress you have made and the merit you have attained during life. Of course the church and its officers are there to help you all they can; but even they cannot guarantee that you will pass the final judgment. Thus the question whether you will in the end be accepted by God must be left open until the final assessment, for the very good reason that acceptance with God is thought to depend upon one’s works, progress and merit.
Now this, however plausible it sounds, is the very opposite of what the New Testament actually teaches about acceptance with God, for in this matter Christianity goes clean counter to all religion. It says quite categorically that salvation is not by works and merit. It is the gift of God (Eph 2:8–9). As a free gift, therefore, it cannot be made to depend on how well one has progressed on the path. The question then arises: At what point along the way does one receive this gift? At what point does God give us the assurance that he has accepted us? At the end of the way? No! At the very beginning of the way, as the Lord Jesus explained to his contemporaries: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life’ (John 5:24). Or, as Paul put it: ‘Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God’ (Rom 5:1–2). What is more, we see in both these statements the assurance that, on the ground of having been justified at the beginning of the road, God [p 55] assures us that we shall pass the gate at the end of the road as well. As the Apostle Paul puts it: ‘Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God’ (Rom 5:9).
Too good to be true?
At first sight this seems so contrary to what most people have ever thought, that they are inclined to dismiss it out of hand and to consider that it cannot be a true interpretation of Christianity. And yet this basic security and sense of acceptance with God was central in the teaching of Jesus:
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. (John 10:27–29)
But, in case we still find it hard to accept that a believer in Christ can enjoy in this life the peace of complete acceptance with God, let us consider, by way of analogy the deepest of human relationships, that between a man and his wife. In order to ensure a happy marriage would it be wise of a husband to leave it as long as possible after a wedding before allowing his wife to know that he has accepted her? We have only to ask the question to answer it. For a woman to spend the whole of her married life uncertain whether she had done enough to [p 56] gain acceptance with her husband would transform her married life into a kind of slavery. In normal marriages the husband assures his wife of his acceptance of her and of his lifelong commitment to her from the very beginning. It is the wife’s confidence in her husband’s love and acceptance of her from the very start that brings out her devotion to him and his to her.
The analogy is not far-fetched. According to Christianity, salvation is not a scheme for piling up merit that buys acceptance with God. It is a question of entering into a present personal relationship with our Creator which the Bible describes in terms of a husband’s love for his wife (Eph 5:22–33). That relationship is not to be left uncertain until the end of life. Indeed, if ever it is to be formed, it must be formed now in this life. But once it is formed it will last eternally.
Yet again, it seems to many people that this simply cannot be true; for if it were, it would, they think, be positively dangerous. ‘If we could be sure in this life of acceptance with God,’ they say, ‘would it not lead us to abuse his love and his grace by unworthy living?’
The question seems reasonable enough, particularly to people who have never experienced what happens when one responds to Christ’s invitation, and enters into this personal relationship with Him. But the answer to the question is No, decidedly, No. And it is No, because of the nature of the gate through which we must enter in order to begin the Christian pathway. The gate is not the rite of infant baptism performed on a baby who is quite unaware of what is happening. It is genuine new birth produced in a person by the regenerating power of the [p 57] Holy Spirit (Titus 3:3–7; John 3:5–16). It is not achieved by a person’s effort and works; it is a gift given to everyone who personally repents and personally receives Christ as Lord and Saviour (John 1:12–13; Eph 2:8–10). But because the gift is the gift of new spiritual life, with new powers, new desires, new goals, and above all a new relationship with God, it naturally leads to good works, indeed to a whole new lifestyle. This does not mean that the believer is sinlessly perfect, but when he sins a true believer will repent and confess his sins and receive God’s promised forgiveness (1 John 1:9).
This then is the glory of the Christian gospel. But it carries a serious corollary. When there is no evidence of a changed lifestyle, there is every reason to doubt whether this new birth has ever taken place, whether indeed the person concerned has ever personally entered the gate. Scripture says ‘As the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead’ (Jas 2:26). A baby does not get life by crying; but a new-born baby that doesn’t cry, is probably stillborn.
Christ’s truth claim is not tyrannous
A final point arises in connection with Christ’s claim to be the unique Saviour. For example, he said ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’ (John 14:6). Similarly his apostles proclaimed his uniqueness: ‘There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved’ (Acts 4:12). Now in an increasingly pluralistic world, many people are very uneasy when they hear [p 58] such claims. They share the fear articulated by Karl Popper in his famous book, The Open Society, that the belief that one has the truth is always implicitly totalitarian. Popper points out that it is just a short step from the confidence which says, ‘I am sure . . .’ to the tyranny which says, ‘. . . therefore I must be obeyed’. This leads Popper to the view that all absolute truth claims must be rejected to safeguard society.15 Since history provides us with too many examples of the realization of this fear, it is vitally important that we see that Christ who did make such claims, repudiated violence and tyranny. Indeed this is one of the glories of the Christian message that Christ did not force his way into people’s lives by demonstrations of naked power—and he did not lack power. He wanted men and women to come to trust and love God—and trust and love cannot be compelled, they can only be won. Christ rather demonstrated his love and care for people, as the Gospels describe in great detail. And when some people nevertheless rejected him and asked him to leave, he did not violently force them to submit to him but rather accepted their verdict and sadly went away (Matt 8:34–9:1). When his disciples took swords in order to defend him, he stopped them at once by uttering the famous words: ‘Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword’ (Matt 26:52). To the Roman Procurator Pilate, before whom he had been arraigned as a potential insurrectionist leader, he said: ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews . . .’ [p 59] (John 18:36). Responding to this statement, with the full authority of Rome behind him, Pilate pronounced: ‘I find no guilt in him’ (John 18:38). The context is Christ’s statement to Pilate that he was a king come into the world ‘to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice’ (John 18:37). Thus Pilate’s verdict shows that he saw no political threat in Christ’s claim. Moreover, Christ even prayed for the soldiers who were detailed to crucify him. He cannot, therefore be held responsible for those of his professed followers who, in direct disobedience to his explicit command, have used force and violence to tyrannize others. Such behaviour is simply not Christian, whatever it may maintain to the contrary. Christ’s claims, if genuinely accepted, lead people to obey his teaching and, in particular, to love even their enemies. Christ cannot fairly be criticized for the behaviour of those who all down the centuries and still to this day reject his teaching and turn Christianity into a tyranny.
Notes
8 Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, Vol. II, preface (1898) from Oxford Essential Quotations.
9 Zaehner, The Concise Encyclopaedia of Living Faiths, 265.
10 Zaehner, 275.
11 Zaehner, 409.
12 Zaehner, 265
13 The Study of Religions, 168.
14 See The Open Society.
English (US) · 