Ways of Knowing God

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Almost every religion claims that it is the exclusive path to a true knowledge of God, or at least that its path is superior to other religious traditions. This is certainly the case in my own tradition, Christianity: Only in Jesus Christ is the true revelation of God made accessible.

I have come to believe that this exclusivist tendency in my own faith tradition—and in other faith traditions—is a serious barrier to genuine peace-making in a world of religious pluralism. For Christianity, the claim that salvation is possible only in Jesus Christ is, in the end, dismissive of other religious traditions and inherently divisive. If Christians are to be instruments of the peace of God, we must develop a new Christian theology of religions that will enable us to see God’s revelation in Jesus Christ while at the same time rejecting any claim to exclusivism.

Religious belief is founded on revelation, which is nothing more nor less than the self-disclosure of God. Christian revelation, as the great 20th-century theologian (and my mentor) H. Richard Niebuhr put it, is that “special occasion” in Christian history that illuminates everything else in our history. It is the one event in our lives that makes all the rest of life intelligible.¹

Christians have traditionally affirmed that the only true revelation of God is seen and known only in Jesus Christ. Yet a true revelation of God has never been regarded in the Christian tradition as the only revelation of God. As early as the second century, Justin Martyr, an early Christian apologist, argued that Greek philosophy was a preparation for the truths of Christianity, and thus tried to reconcile Christian and non-Christian cultures. Justin acknowledged that the logos made fully known in Jesus Christ was perceived and represented in some non-Christian philosophers and especially by the Hebrew prophets. By the time of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), this had been accepted as orthodox Christian belief.² Thus, 018while Thomas Aquinas held that redemption comes only through Jesus Christ, he did not exclude others being named “subordinate mediators” between God and humanity, especially insofar as they prefigured Jesus Christ or those who, after the coming of God in Christ, shared in the ministry of reconciliation. Among these subordinate mediators were especially the Hebrew prophets. Still, the knowledge of God available apart from God’s self-disclosure in Jesus Christ was not true knowledge of God in that it was insufficient for the salvation of the human soul.

I come from a largely Calvinist Reformation tradition, and in some ways it is the tradition I know best. For John Calvin (1509–1564), who was one of the most influential Christian theologians, the vision of God’s face, the knowledge of God, is available to human beings in three ways. The first is simply the “sense of the Divine.” The capacity for sensing the divine, he said, is implanted in the consciousness of every human being. The second way that human beings can come to know God is by observation of the wonderful works of God in creation. Both the natural world and human body bear the likeness of God in that they reflect the divine glory in the order and harmony of creation. As Calvin wrote, one cannot gaze at the mountains or the stars or the sea without in some way encountering the sense of the transcendent. Even the most ignorant, untutored person may experience awe and wonder about God simply by gazing on the beauty of the world. This is the aesthetic experience of God’s self-revelation. Scientists too find evidence of the divine work in their observations, both minute and infinite.³ The 20th-century German philosopher of religion Rudolf Otto called this aesthetic experience the mysterium tremendum, a feeling that is a response to the holy, to what is completely other from us and transcendent to all we know. Calvin’s third source for knowledge of God that is available to all human beings is a moral sense embodied and internalized in “natural law.” While we are all seriously compromised by original sin, nonetheless even pagans manifest respect for their neighbor, understand moral intentionality and experience a sense of guilt. The clearest statement of this natural law for Calvin was the Ten Commandments given by Moses to the people of Israel at Sinai.⁴

Having affirmed all of these sources for knowledge of God as universally available to humankind, however, Calvin issues a stern warning. This universally available knowledge of God is not “saving knowledge” of God. In other words, the awful alienation from the face of God that is the fate of all humans is made known only in Holy Scripture and especially in the coming of Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit.⁵ As a result, this warning became commonplace among Christian thinkers influenced by Calvin, such as Karl Barth (see below). In effect it meant that all other means of knowing God were insufficient.

For Christians and their churches, the relationship to the Jews posed the problem of religious pluralism from the very beginnings of the Christian movement after the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 A.D. The young Jesus movement found itself in conflict with many in the rabbinic movement. For the rabbinic movement in the post-Temple world, the Torah formed the basis of Jewish identity and mediated the continuing promise of God to redeem Israel. For the Jesus movement, the strongest of the Jewish apocalyptic movements, it was hope in the imminent return of a crucified and resurrected Jesus that was the future of God’s promise. When, after a number of years, the anticipated apocalyptic event had not occurred, the followers of the Jesus movement, now called Christians, began to declare that the resurrection of Jesus had already ushered in the new age of promise. Moreover, by the end of the first century A.D., the new church was predominantly Gentile and this added further complications to the controversy.

In this context, the early Christian evangelists began to claim that the church had superseded Judaism and that the church was now the community of the new Israel in whom the promise of God would be fulfilled. In the Gospels, especially the Gospel of John, the claim was made that the Jews (those still not identified with the Jesus movement) had forfeited their claim to the ancient promise of God to Israel. Because they had rejected the true Messiah and were responsible for his crucifixion, the Jews were established as the “other” over and against the new chosen people of God.⁶ They were seen as the quintessential dissenters from the new universalistic claims that Christians were making for Jesus Christ as the only way to salvation. Thus began the tragic and sinful history of Christian antagonism toward the Jews.

By the end of the second century, anti-Judaism and the Christ-killer myth had become prominent in the teachings of church leaders. The early church fathers perpetuated the anti-Judaism of the New Testament writers with even greater vehemence than John did in his gospel. By the fourth century, Augustine and John Chrysostom were among those who gave credence to the awful depiction of Jews as the enemies of God who crucified Christ. Although a long series of papal pronouncements tried to protect Jews against overt violence, the power 019of the “Christ-killer” myth created a cultural climate in which hatred and killing of Jews occurred with impunity. What emerged was a relentless and continuing persecution of the Jews, soon manifesting itself in murderous pogroms.

By the 13th century there was a new development. Pope Boniface VIII, in effect, made official what Thomas Aquinas had argued earlier in the century: Salvation was not only confined to those who believed in Jesus Christ, it was further restricted to those who believed in the “true” teaching about Jesus Christ, teaching authorized by the leadership of the church. Jews could still be saved, but they had to convert to the Catholic Church. Under threat of death, many Jews did convert and join the church. But by the 15th century in Spain, Torquemada, the infamous grand inquisitor, acted on the assumption that even converted Jews were not to be trusted as faithful Christians: Converts of Jewish blood must be exposed; they were still Jews by natural descent. Today, this seems strange to say the least: The earliest Christians were Jews. But somehow the very Jewishness shared with the founders of the church became a barrier to even the possibility of genuine faith in Christ. Torquemada pursued his strategy of torture and death, no longer in the service of a strategy for conversion of Jews to the true faith but as an attempt to eliminate the Jewish bloodline from the church.

At this moment, Jewish “blood” became the defining feature of those singled out for Christian persecution. With this development, the Christian church, in the name of Jesus Christ, stood at the head of the road to Auschwitz. The completion of the journey only awaited the invention of 19th-century scientific theories of race and the rise of modern nationalism.⁷

This history, more than anything else, has led the churches, both Protestant and Catholic, to begin a re-examination of the claim that the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is the sole path to salvation, the only saving Word of God in the entire history of the world.⁸

For those of us who claim the knowledge of God through Jesus Christ, the challenge is to develop a new theology of religions that will preserve our claim to know the God of mercy and redemption in Jesus Christ—without making an a priori denial of the possibility that God has fully revealed his face to other persons in different times and places.⁹

This new theology must go beyond mere toleration. In saying this, I do not mean to imply that we have reached even a stage of toleration. Many, perhaps most, Christians who cling to a narrow interpretation of the Gospels still see little or no value in other religious traditions. Some see other religious traditions as idolatrous and evil. So Christian toleration of other religious traditions is a goal that we must work toward. But we must go beyond this: Toleration of other religious traditions can be grounded in scarcely concealed condescension. For example, Thomas Aquinas, while allowing for the knowledge of God as possible in other religious traditions, nonetheless described them as “subordinate mediators of God’s reconciliation with the world.”¹⁰ Calvin and Luther held much the same views. More recently, theologian Paul Tillich referred to faithful and good people who are not Christians as “Christians incognito.” Karl Rahner called them “anonymous Christians.”¹¹ These Christian theologians allowed for the fact that the logos revealed in Jesus Christ may also make itself known to non-Christians; faithful practitioners of other religious traditions do, indeed, see some of God’s truth, but only dimly. The fullness of God’s self-revelation for these Christians is still possible only in Jesus Christ. Thus, while hatred and violence toward practitioners of other faith traditions are not to be tolerated, neither are their claims to a saving knowledge of God to be taken seriously.

Just as we must go beyond mere toleration, we must also go beyond the concept of mutual understanding. Although we can all applaud efforts by Christians to understand more about the beliefs and practices of other faith traditions, that in itself does not affirm that what God has revealed in other religions is redemptive knowledge of God.

Would this new theology of religions undermine the theology of the Christian faith? It is precisely the fear that openness to other religious traditions will destabilize Christian faith that has made Christians hesitant to move toward a new theology of religions.¹² But such openness should not be a problem.

My understanding of God’s sovereignty has been deeply influenced by the Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth (1886–1968). The central theme of his theology is the freedom of God. Simply put, if God is sovereign over all, then God is totally free, free even to come to human beings as a fellow human being. It is God’s freedom that allows the possibility of God making himself known in Jesus Christ.

But Barth stumbles badly when he turns to the question of God’s revelation other than that which is made known in Jesus Christ. Like Calvin he can say that the world itself speaks ipso facto about the God who made it and that God reveals himself in this way. Again, like Calvin, Barth concedes that the Hebrew prophets are really prophets and that their words are true in that they truly speak of God. He even acknowledges that the 16th-century Reformist leader Huldrych Zwingli was not entirely wrong in appealing to the wisdom of Greek philosophers. Yet, while these words are true, they are not the Truth. As Barth put it, “In distinction from all these, Jesus Christ is the one Word of God. There are other words that are good in their own way and measure. There are other prophets in this sense…but there is only one Prophet who speaks the word of God as He is Himself this Word, and this One is called and is Jesus.”¹³ Nothing can be added to this Word, and nothing can compete with this Word. “Who and what the true God is, and through him what the true man is; what the freedom of God is, and the freedom given by him to man, is said to us in and with the existence of Jesus Christ as true Son of God and Son of Man in such a way that any addition can only mean a diminution and perversion of our knowledge of the truth…[Jesus Christ] is not exposed on any third side to any serious competition, any challenge to His truth, any threat to His authority…That He is the one Word of God means further that His truth and prophecy cannot be combined with any other, nor can it be enclosed with other words in a system 043superior to both Him and them.”¹⁴ And finally, “That He is the one Word of God means…that His prophecy cannot be transcended by any other.”¹⁵ All other words derive their truth only from the fact that the true Word dwells in them. The word outside of Jesus Christ thus does not offer true salvation.¹⁶

The God who is free enough to be made known to us by becoming human in Jesus is in Barth’s analysis not finally free. Calvin’s Sovereign God as interpreted by Barth is not finally sovereign. God stands limited in freedom to one tradition born at one time in one place in the world.

If Barth had followed his own logic to its final conclusion, he would have determined that a God who is absolutely free is surely free to make himself known anywhere and at anytime. Yet the best Barth can do is to concede that the apprehensions of ultimate reality in other religions in other times and places are “lesser lights,” pointing beyond themselves to God’s revelation in Jesus Christ.

Like Barth, I hold the revelation of God’s face in Jesus Christ to be central and decisive for me. That is the core of my faith and the ground of my hope. But as I have developed in my understanding of what it is to be a Christian in the world, I now affirm the possibility of God’s revelation to other faithful persons in different times and different places. Different paths of faith entwined with other histories and cultures will never be like my Christian faith. All religions, including my own, reflect the possibilities and limitations of our culture and the specificity of our particular time. They are, as it were, social constructs. They present very distinct and culturally determined visions of ultimate reality. As such they are the cultural expressions of the vision of God’s face and culturally specific responses to divine revelation. The various religions, then, become specific paths of faith; they are saving faiths in the sense that they offer the fruits of true faith, revelations of the transcendent that engender hope and transformation to those who faithfully follow the teachings and practices of that religion. The vision of the transcendent in each of the world religions will differ substantially from the others, as will the outcomes in practice. Still the hope, the transformation and the vision that they offer in their historical and cultural context constitute a true saving faith to those who are believers and who practice faithfully the best of their traditions.¹⁷

Other Christian theologians have reached similar conclusions and have profoundly influenced my own thinking. My former colleague at Claremont Graduate University, John B. Cobb, Jr., believes that he will be a better Christian if he incorporates into his own faith and practice certain beliefs and practices he has learned from Buddhists.¹⁸ The result of such incorporations is a Christianity enriched by the light of God seen through the eyes of faithful practitioners from other traditions. Such is the spirit of a new Christian theology of religions: an effort to share and learn from religious traditions other than our own, for the sake of a more universal and adequate practice of Christian piety and a new context of understanding that can lead the way toward world transformation. This new Christian theology of religion is not eclecticism, however. It is not a mixing of faiths together into some sort of super faith. Rather it points toward the affirmation of the universal and saving revelation of God that is made concrete in several great religious traditions.

Powerful explorations of this new Christian theology of religions may also be found in the outstanding works of people like John Hick, also of Claremont Graduate University, and Diana Eck of Harvard University.¹⁹ Like most Christian theologians, these scholars believe that the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is central and decisive for Christian faith. But none of them would confine the work of God in this world to God’s self-revelation in the Christian tradition. They strongly affirm that other visions of reality equally see the face of God. They hold, as I do, that this new Christian theology of religions will make us better Christians, better able to understand the incredible, diverse ways in which God acts in the world to redeem it and make us whole.

Religious pluralism is not a threat to a vital faith in Jesus Christ. It is rather a testimony to the enormous creativity of the one God who is made known to Christians in Jesus Christ as the God who lives and acts in total freedom. God’s creativity is boundless. Unless we realize this, we are in danger of becoming barriers to, rather than bearers of, the unconditional and universal love of God for the whole of creation.

Almost every religion claims that it is the exclusive path to a true knowledge of God, or at least that its path is superior to other religious traditions. This is certainly the case in my own tradition, Christianity: Only in Jesus Christ is the true revelation of God made accessible. I have come to believe that this exclusivist tendency in my own faith tradition—and in other faith traditions—is a serious barrier to genuine peace-making in a world of religious pluralism. For Christianity, the claim that salvation is possible only in Jesus Christ is, in the end, dismissive of other […]