Is Jesus the Only Way?

Mark Pickering and Peter Saunders

Dr Mark Pickering is the Student Secretary of the UK Christian Medical Fellowship. Peter Saunders is General Secretary of the UK Christian Medical Fellowship.

From the CMF's Deadly Questions series, Mark Pickering and Peter Saunders revive a series that looks at vital issues where Christians regularly face opposition. This article is based on material from the popular 'Confident Christianity' course.[1]

We now live in a 'global village', a multi-faith society where exclusive claims may offend. Many adherents of other faiths are prepared to recognise Jesus as a great teacher, prophet, leader and reformer -even perhaps as one way to God. Are we not then being arrogant, intolerant and narrow-minded by suggesting he is the only way? This question is especially relevant in UK medical schools where nowadays students of ethnic minorities and other religions can sometimes outnumber Anglo-Saxon agnostics.

First we need to be sure in our own minds that Jesus is the only way. If he isn't, if our friends' religions and philosophies are equally valid routes to God, then we should stop pestering them with the gospel and learn to live and let live. However, if he is, then they are on a one-way journey to judgement and we must do whatever we can to introduce them to our Lord. Further to that, if other ways lead to God, we might as well give up being Christians, because there are a lot of other religions that are much easier to follow than Christianity!

Secondly, for our friends' sakes, we must be able to communicate Christ's uniqueness. If we fail, they may well be left thinking that he's just another option out of many possibles and we will have done them a great disservice. Let's look at some of the ways that this topic comes up in conversation.

Surely all religions are the same underneath?

The world's religions do have some things in common - they all recognise a spiritual dimension and have broadly similar moral codes. When it comes to the other two monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam, there are even more similarities.[2] We share common history, prophets, concepts and the Jewish Bible is 75% of the Christian Bible. Indeed, some of these similarities can often be used as bridges for dialogue, as common ground to lead into discussing the unique claims of Christianity.

But we cannot possibly ignore the differences. Often it is only ignorance of the facts that leads our friends to suggest that all religions are the same. For despite the similarities, the differences are huge. It is not just a case of 'believe in God and be nice to other people - all the rest is mere detail'. It is those very details that make the difference. If you were to examine a counterfeit £20 note, it would look and feel very much like the real thing. You may even need special training to spot the differences. But at the end of the day, the similarities are irrelevant and actually distract us from the real issue at hand; it is those small but real differences that make one worth £20 and the other worth nothing.

There are many distinctives, but it is best to concentrate on those that really make a difference. In particular, Christianity makes three distinct claims with which no other religion agrees:

i) The deity of Christ

We will look more closely at this claim below and give references, but for now let us see where other religions differ. Judaism sees Jesus as an impostor, Islam sees him as merely a human prophet; other religions often see him as a good moral teacher or as one of many incarnations of God (eg Hinduism). Even the sub-Christian cults that may seem very similar on the surface have significant differences; the Jehovah's Witnesses see Jesus as God's first creation, a kind of super-angel, totally distinct from the Creator. Even the Mormons believe he is only the physical son of God, who began a man and ascended to deity in much the same way that they believe we ourselves can do.

ii) The authority of the Bible

Christians believe that the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures (or Old and New Testaments) together constitute the authoritative record of God's dealing with mankind. Many people are prepared to pick and choose about what they like in the Bible, but few will take the whole thing. Jews accept only the Hebrew scriptures (OT), Muslims claim to accept the 'Torah, Psalms and Gospel' but then add that this is in their 'original' forms that are actually non-existent. In practice they generally only accept those parts that agree with the Qur'an. The sub-Christian cults tend to accept the Bible as is, but with very strict limits on interpretation - that of their leaders. Jehovah's Witnesses accept only the often fanciful translations and explanations of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, whilst Mormons accept also the Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price and Doctrines and Covenants. For them the Bible is simply one of four and interpretation of it is usually guided by the other three.

The whole Bible was not finally collated together as one book until the early centuries after Jesus, so no biblical verse refers directly to the whole collection. Yet several references in the Bible speak of the authority of its different parts.[3] Space precludes a discussion of the reasons why the Bible is reliable, but a previous article in Nucleus makes excellent reading on the subject.[4]

(iii) Salvation by grace through faith in Christ's work

Islam tells us that mankind is essentially good and that we just need to live a certain way to earn God's forgiveness. Judaism, since the destruction of the temple in AD 70, has also relied basically on righteous acts. The sub-Christian cults, whilst paying lip-service to salvation through faith in Christ, often end up with more of a gospel of works. Mormonism comes pretty close in this respect to biblical Christianity, but when taken with its other beliefs there is clearly a gulf fixed between the two. The biblical view is that humans are essentially evil and unable to live up to God's righteous standards. Only the perfect sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf could satisfy his justice and restore the broken relationship between God and man.[5]

These three simple examples show us that all religions are certainly not the same and in fact they are totally incompatible.

All religions contain relative truth

Not satisfied with obvious contradictions between the major teachings of different religions, some will sidestep this with the claim that the differences are not really that important as 'we are all paths going up the same mountain'. The argument goes that each different religion is climbing a different side and cannot see the others, but once we reach the top all will become clear and we will see that we were all headed for the same place in the end. This is the mistake of relativism. To those lost in its grip, any explanation of essential differences between different religions will cut no ice, as two totally contradictory statements can be seen as both true in their own way.

This way of thinking is nice because it means you never have to disagree with anyone, but of course it is yet another way of covering up the truth. For those in the medical profession to hold this view is really quite strange. Any doctor knows that you either have cancer or you don't. 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.'[6] The apostles also concurred: 'Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.'[7] Further we are told that whoever does not believe in Christ stands condemned.[8] Whoever acknowledges Christ will be acknowledged by him on the day of judgment,[9] but whoever denies him will be denied.[10] Anyone who is not for Christ is against him.[11]

Jesus never said 'I am God - worship 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!' even though this was the response even of an angel when John mistakenly worshipped him.[12]

Yet having said this, the divinity of Jesus is in fact directly stated in at least eight passages of the NT. For example, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God'[13] and also, 'Thomas said to him, 'My Lord and my God!''[14] Further to this, his deity is strongly implied in several other passages.[15]

The fact is that Jesus was far too sophisticated a teacher to wander round shouting 'I am God!' This would have got him nowhere and been totally alien to the cultural context of his day. 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:

1. He called himself 'I Am';[16] bridegroom; [17] shepherd;[18] the first and the last [19]
2. Others called him Lord (Hebrew = YHWH, Greek = Kyrios)[20]
3. He accepted worship [21]
4. He created the world [22]
5. He existed before his birth [23]
6. He forgave sins [24]
7. He said he would judge the world [25]

Perhaps his most provocative title was his favourite, the 'Son of Man', mentioned over 80 times in the Gospels.[26] Far from merely emphasising his humanity, this is an unmistakable reference to Daniel 7:13,14 where we are shown a supernatural figure who is 'given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshipped him.' Jesus identified himself as this divine-human Messiah figure and accepted the title from others.[27]

Conclusion

We can tell from the reactions people had to Jesus, that there was no doubt about what he was claiming. They either worshipped him [28] or accused him of blasphemy[29]. 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.

References

1. Full course available on-line at http:// www.cmf.org.uk/evang/conf/ confcont.htm
2. For Judaism, see Jonathan Bernd's article in this issue For Islam, see Pickering M. Islam - How to Reach Your Neighbour. Nucleus 2000; October:30-38
3. Eg Dt 31:11,12; Jos 1:8; Mt 5:18; 2 Tim 3:16; Rev 22:18,19
4. Bunn A. Is Christianity Evidence-Based? Nucleus 2001; January:17-27
5. Rom 3:23,24; Eph 2:8,9
6. Jn 14:6
7. Acts 4:12; see also 1 Tim 2:5
8. Jn 3:18
9. Mt 10:32; Lk 12:8
10. Mt 10:33; Mk 8:38; Lk 9:26, 12:9; 2 Tim 2:12
11. Mt 12:30; Lk 11:23
12. Rev 19:10
13. Jn 1:1
14. Jn 20:28. See also Jn 1:18; Acts 20:28; Rom 9:5; Tit 2:13; Heb 1:8; 2 Pet 1:1
15. Mt 1:23; 2 Thes 1:12; 1 Tim 1:17; Jas 1:1; 1 Jn 5:20
16. Ex 3:14 cf Jn 8:58, 8:24, 18:5; Mk 14:62
17. Is 62:5; Je 2:2; Ezk 16:8 cf Mk 2:19; Jn 3:29; Rev 19:7
18. Ps 23:1, 80:1; Is 40:11; Ezk 34:15 cf Jn 10:11-16
19. Is 44:6, 48:12 cf Rev 2:8, 22:13 20 Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 12:3; 2 Cor 4:5; Phil 2:11
20. Mt 4:10 cf Mt 2:2,8,11, 14:33, 28:17; Lk 24:52; Jn 9:38
21. Gn 1:1; Ps 33:6,9, 148:5 cf Jn 1:3; Col 1:16; Heb 1:2
22. Jn 17:5; Jn 1:1
23. Is 43:25 cf Mt 1:21; Mk 2:5-12; Lk 7:48; Acts 5:31
24. Is 5:16 cf Mt 25:31-46; Mk 8:38; Jn 5:22-30; 2 Thes 1:7-10
25. Eg Mt 20:28; Jn 9:35-38
26. For a fuller treatment of this passage see debate.org.uk/topics/apolog/ sonofman.htm
27. Mt 14:33, 28:17; Lk 24:52; Jn 9:38, 20:28
28. Mt 26:65,66; Mk 2:7, 14:63,64; Jn 5:18; 8:58, 10:33, 19:7

© This article is reproduced from the Christian Medical Fellowship's website ( cmf.org.uk ) - used with permission

Religious Pluralism

Alister McGrath

Alister McGrath is Professor of Theology, Ministry and Education, and Head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture at King's College, London. He holds doctorates in molecular biophysics as well as in historical and systematic theology. He is Director of the Oxford Centre for Evangelism and Apologetics.

One of the most perceptive analysts of the consequences of pluralism for the Christian churches is Lesslie Newbigin, who is able to draw on his substantial first-hand experience of Christian life in India as he reflects on what pluralism means - and does not mean! - for contemporary Christianity. Commenting on his theme, ‘The gospel in a pluralist society’, Newbigin remarks: It has become a commonplace to say that we live in a pluralist society - not merely a society which is in fact plural in the variety of cultures, religions and lifestyles which it embraces, but pluralist in the sense that this plurality is celebrated as things to be approved and cherished.[30]

Newbigin here makes a distinction between pluralism as a fact of life, and pluralism as an ideology - that is, the belief that plur¬alism is to be encouraged and desired, and that normative claims to truth are to be censured as imperialist and divisive. With the former, there can be no arguing. The Christian proclamation has always taken place in a pluralist world, in competition with rival religious and intellectual convictions.

Ancient Israel was acutely aware that its faith was not shared by its neighbours. The existence of other religions was simply a fact of life for the Israelites. It caused them no great difficulties, in that they believed that theirs happened to be right, where others were wrong. The same pattern emerges in the New Testament. From the first days of its existence, Christianity has recognized the existence of other religions, and the challenge which they posed. Initially, Christianity faced a challenge from Judaism; this rapidly receded, to be replaced by the challenge of Roman civil religion, various forms of Greek religion of late antiquity, gnos¬ticism, and various pagan mystery cults. The issues raised are nothing new. In recent decades, widespread immigration from the Indian subcontinent to the United Kingdom, from former French colonies in Africa to France, and from the nations of the Asian Pacific Rim to Australia and the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada, has brought the issue home to mod¬ern western society, which had hitherto been shielded from it. Christianity was born amidst religious pluralism; that pluralism has now re-emerged, both as a social reality and a theological issue, in the west. The issues raised by the existence of other religions are considerable, and would merit books in themselves. This section can hope to identify and engage with only some of the more significant ones.

The rise of religious pluralism can directly be related to the collapse of the Enlightenment idea of universal knowledge, rather than any difficulties within Christianity itself. Often, there is a crude attempt to divert attention from the collapse of the Enlightenment vision by implying that religious pluralism repre-sents a new and unanswerable challenge to Christianity itself. The Princeton philosopher Diogenes Allen rightly dismisses this as a spurious claim:

Many have been driven to relativism by the collapse of the Enlightenment's confidence in the power of reason to provide foundations for our truth-claims and to achieve finality in our search for truth in the various disciplines. Much of the distress concerning pluralism and relativism which is voiced today springs from a crisis in the secular mentality of modern western culture, not from a crisis in Christianity itself.[31]

Yet these relativistic preconceptions have become deeply ingrained within secular society, often with the assumption that they are to the detriment of Christian faith.

For the apologist, the central issue is this: given that there are so many religions in the market-place, how can Christianity claim to be true? Let us note a difficulty here, before proceeding further. The word ‘religion’ needs further examination. In his classic, but highly problematic, work The Golden Bough (1890), Sir James Frazer made the fundamental point that: ‘there is prob¬ably no subject in the world about which opinions differ so much as the nature of religion, and to frame a definition of it which would satisfy everyone must obviously be impossible.’ Yet, largely on account of the homogenizing tendencies of modern lib¬eralism, there has recently been a determined effort to reduce all religions to the same basic phenomenon.

There is a question of intellectual power here. Who makes the rules which determines what is a religion? The rules of this game determine the outcome: so who decides on them? Underlying much recent western liberal discussion of ‘the religions’ is a naive assumption that ‘religion’ is a genus, an agreed category. In fact, it is nothing of the sort. John Milbank, in an important study, makes the point that the ‘assumption about a religious genus’ is central to ... the more recent mode of encounter as dialogue, but it would be a mistake to imagine that it arose simultan¬eously among all the participants as the recognition of an evident truth. On the contrary, it is clear that the other religions were taken by Christian thinkers to be species of the genus `religion', because these thinkers systematically subsumed alien cultural phenomena under categories which comprise western notions of what constitutes religious thought and practice. These false categoriz¬ations have often been accepted by western-educated representatives of the other religions themselves, who are unable to resist the politically imbued rhetorical force of western discourse. [32]

We must therefore be suspicious of the naive assumption that `religion' is a well-defined category, which can be surgically distin¬guished from ‘culture’ as a whole. It is important to appreciate that a cultural issue is often linked in with this debate: it is implied that to defend Christianity is to belittle non-Christian religions, which is unacceptable in a multi¬cultural society. Especially to those of liberal political convictions, the multicultural agenda demands that religions should not be permitted to make truth-claims, to avoid the dangers of imperialism and triumphalism. Indeed, there seems to be a wide¬spread perception that the rejection of religious pluralism entails intolerance, or unacceptable claims to exclusivity. In effect, the liberal political agenda dictates that all religions should be treated on an equal footing. It is but a small step from this political judgment to the theological declaration that all religions are the same. But is there any reason for progressing from the entirely laudable and acceptable demand that we should respect religions other than our own, to the more radical demand that we regard them all as the same, or as equally valid manifestations of some eternal or ‘spiritual’ dimension to life?

In its most extreme form, this view results in the claim that all, religions lead to God. But this cannot be taken seriously, when some world religions are avowedly non-theistic. A religion can hardly lead to God if it explicitly denies the existence of a god or any gods. We therefore need to restate the question in terms of ‘ultimate reality’, or ‘truth’. Thus refined, this position might be, stated as follows. Religion is often determined by the circum¬stances of one’s birth. An Indian is likely to be a Hindu; an Arab is likely to be a Moslem. On account of this observation, it is argued, all religions must be equal paths to the truth.

This makes truth a function of birth. If I were to be born into Nazi Germany, I would be likely to be a Nazi - and this makes Nazism true? If I had been born in ancient Rome, I would probably have shared its polytheism; if I had been born in mod¬ern Arabia, I would be a monotheist. So they are both true? No other intellectual discipline would accept such a superficial approach to truth. Why accept it here? It seems to rest upon an entirely laudable wish to allow that everyone is right, which ends up destroying the notion of truth itself. Consider the two propo¬sitions:

a. Different people have different religious views.

b. Therefore all religious views are equally valid.

Is proposition (b) in any way implied by proposition (a)? For the form of liberalism committed to this approach, mere existence of a religious idea appears to be a guarantor of its truth! Yet no-one seems prepared to fight for the truth-content of defunct religions, such as classical polytheism - perhaps because there is, no-one alive committed to them, whose views need to be respec¬ted in a multicultural situation?

The fatal weakness of this approach usually leads to its being abandoned, being replaced with a modified version, which could be stated thus: ‘Any view which is held with sincerity may be is regarded as true’. I might thus be a Nazi, a Satanist, or a pas¬sionate believer in the flatness of the earth. My sincerity is a guarantee of the truth. On this view, it would follow that if someone sincerely believes that modern Europe would be a better place if six million Jews were to be placed in gas chambers, the sincerity of those convictions allow that view to be accepted as true. British philosopher of religion John Hick summarizes the absurdity of this view, ‘To say that whatever is sincerely believed, and practised is, by definition, true, would be the end of all critical discrimination, both intellectual and moral.’ [33]

It is therefore more than a little ironic that the most significant advocate of the pluralist ‘truth-in-all-religions’ approach is the same John Hick, who argues that the same basic infinite divine reality lies at the experiential roots of all religions. They, however, experience and express this reality in different ways. Why? ‘Their differing experiences of that reality, interacting over the centuries with the different thought-forms of different cultures have led to an increasing differentiation and contrasting elaborations.’[34] (A similar outlook is associated with English Deism in the late seventeenth century, which held that there was originally no universal rational religion, which gradually become corrupted into the various religions of the world. There is no historical evidence for this dogmatic assumption.)

This approach thus suggests that the various religions may be understood to complement one another. In other words, truth, does not lie in an ‘either-or’ but in a ‘both-and’ approach: differences within religions are, ‘Differences in perception, not reality.’ This naturally leads to the idea that dialogue between religions can lead to an enhancement of truth, in that the limited perspectives of one religion can be complemented by the different perspectives of another. As all religions are held to relate to the same reality, ‘dialogue’ thus constitutes a privileged mode of access to truth.

On the basis of Hick's homogenizing approach, no genuine conflicting truth-claims can occur. They are ruled out of order, on a priori grounds: by definition, religions can only comple¬ment, not contradict, each other. In practice, Hick appears to contradict himself here, frequently declaring that ‘exclusive’ approaches to religions are wrong. For example, he styles the traditional ‘salvation through Christ alone’ statements of the 1960 Congress on World Mission as ‘ridiculous’ - where, by his own criteria, the most stinging criticism that could be directed at them is that they represent a ‘difference in perception’. The inherent absurdity of Hick's refusal to take an evaluative position in relation to other religions is compromised by his eagerness to adopt such a position in relation to versions of Christianity which threaten his outlook, both on account of their numerical strength and non-inclusive theologies.

When all is said and done, and when all differences in expres¬sion arising from cultural and intellectual development are taken into account, Hick must be challenged forcefully concerning his crudely homogenizing approach to the world religions. It is absurd to say that a religion which says that there is a God complements a religion which declares, with equal vigour, that there is not a God (and both types of religion exist).[35] If the religious believer actually believes something, then disagreement is inevitable - and proper. As the distinguished American philo¬sopher Richard Rorty remarked, nobody ‘except the occasional cooperative freshman’ really believes that ‘two incompatible opinions on an important topic are equally good.’ [36]

Hick has predetermined that there shall not be differences among the religions; and there the matter rests - for him. Where contradiction arises, we are confronted with cases of special pleading, or death by a thousand qualifications, as Hick argues by introducing increasingly implausible subsidiary hypotheses which so qualify his original views as to render them virtually devoid of meaning. Having dogmatically determined that all religions possess the same core structure, Hick ruthlessly forces them into the same mould - a mould which owes nothing to the outlooks of the world's religions, and everything to the liberal cultural agenda which so obviously inspires Hick's theories.

Hick's defence of the homogeneity of all religions often seems to rest upon a refusal to allow that there are decisive differences between religions, even where these obviously exist. For instance, the Hindu practice of bhakti cannot be described as (and thus assimilated to) ‘worship’, when it so clearly relates to a network of ideas centring on the systematic appeasement of potentially ven¬geful deities, or seeking favours from them. Furthermore, the notion of ‘truth through dialogue’ has merit if, and only if, the dialogue is between parties who are describing the same thing. Dialogue, from its Socratic form onwards, rests upon the assumption that participants share a common recog¬nized subject matter, and that certain truths can be agreed con-cerning this subject. Through the process of dialogue, each participant comes to share an increasingly sympathetic under¬standing of the viewpoints of others - and by doing so, come to a deeper understanding of the central subject area itself. But it has never been shown that the different world religions share a common subject matter. It has often been asserted that they do; but there is a world of difference between the assertions of those with vested liberal cultural precommitments, and the disinteres¬ted comparison of religions.

One of the most serious difficulties which arises here relates to the fact that, on the basis of Hick's model, it is not individual religions which have access to truth; it is the western liberal pluralist, who insists that each religion must be seen in the context of others, before it can be evaluated. As many have pointed out this means that the western liberal doctrine of religious pluralism is defined as the only valid standpoint for evaluating individual religions. Hick has set at the centre of his system of religions vague and undefined idea of ‘the Eternal One’, which seems to be a little more than a vague liberal idea of divinity, carefully defined or, more accurately, deliberately not defined, to avoid the damage that precision entails - to include at least something from all of the major world religions Hick feels it is worth including.

To develop this important point, let us consider a well-worn analogy concerning the relation of the religions. Let us allow Lesslie Newbigin to describe it, and make a vitally important, observation:

In the famous story of the blind men and the elephant. . . the real point of the story is constantly overlooked. The story is told from the point of view of the king and his courtiers, who are not blind but can see that the blind men are unable to grasp the full reality of the elephant and are only able to get hold of part of it. The story is constantly told in order to neutralize the affirmations of the great religions, to suggest that they learn humility and recognize that none of them can have more than one aspect of the truth. But, of course, the real point of the story is exactly the opposite. If the king were also blind, there would be no story. The story is told by the king, and it is the immensely arrogant claim of one who sees the full truth, which all the world’s religions are only groping after. It embodies the claim to know the full reality which relativizes all the claims of the religions.’[37] Newbigin brings out with clarity the arrogance of the liberal claim to be able to see all the religions from the standpoint of one who sees the full truth. The liberal pluralist is the king; the unfortunate evangelical is the blindfolded beggar. Or so the pluralist would have us believe. Perhaps a more responsible - and considerably less arrogant - approach would be to suggest that we are all, pluralists included, blind beggars, to whom God graciously makes himself known.

But what framework is to be used for understanding the religions? Elephants have limited potential in this respect. John Hick and Wilfrid Cantwell Smith object to interpreting both the place and the contents of other religious traditions from a Christian point of view. But they seem to miss the point that they have to be interpreted from some interpretative standpoint - and if they have excluded, as a matter of principle, a specifi¬cally Christian viewpoint, they are obliged to adopt one which, by definition, is non-Christian. Further, Hick appears to labour under the misunderstanding that where Christian frameworks are biased, those of liberalism are neutral and disinterested. Yet one of the more significant developments within the recent sociology of knowledge has been the realization that there is no neutral point from which a religion or culture may be evalu¬ated; all vantage points imply a valuation. Hick and Cantwell Smith naively assume that their liberal pluralist approach is ‘detached’ or ‘objective’, whereas it is actually nothing of the sort.

This point is developed by Hendrik Kraemer, who argues that the comparative study of religions cannot produce univer¬sally valid or neutral criteria by which the truth of those religions may be judged. They are not criteria provided by those religions themselves; they are imposed upon them, on account of the presuppositions of the commentators imposing them. The criteria Hick selects allow him to fit his material more effectively, although still unconvincingly, into his pluralist mould.

To give his case more academic credibility, Hick argues that there is a common core structure to all religions. The various religions represent equally ‘valid’ and ‘real’ experiences and apprehensions of the one divine reality. (Note that the fact that there is only one divine reality is assumed as requiring no proof - but polytheism cannot be dismissed as easily as this.) On the basis of this assumption, he declares that all religions ‘are funda¬mentally alike in exhibiting a soteriological structure. That is to say, they are all concerned with salvation/liberation/ enlightenment/fulfilment’.[38] It may reasonably be observed, however, that these concepts of salvation are conceived in such radically different ways, that only someone who was doggedly determined, as a matter of principle, to treat them as aspects of the same greater whole would have sufficient intellectual flexibility to do so. Do Christianity and Satanism really have the same understandings of salvation? Hick would probably reply that Satanism doesn’t count as a religion, thus neatly illustrating that his theory works for those religions he has preselected on the basis of their ability to fit his pluralist mould.

A more neutral observer, relieved of the necessity of insisting that all religions of the world are basically the same, might reasonably suggest that they do not merely offer different ways of achieving salvation; they offer different understandings of salvation altogether. The Rastafarian vision of a paradise in which blacks are served by whites; the old Norse concept of Valhalla; the Buddhist vision of nirvana; the Christian hope o1 resurrection to eternal life - all are so obviously different. How can all the routes to salvation be equally ‘valid’ (a favourite liberal Modezuort), when the goals to be reached in such different ways are so obviously unrelated?

The idea that all religions are the same, or that they all lead to the same God, is thus little more than an unsubstantiated asser¬tion, combined with a refusal to acknowledge that there are genuine and significant differences among the religions. It is a kind of fundamentalism in its own right. Only in western liberal circles would such an idea be taken seriously. (It is not accepted by any Muslim writer I have spoken to.) But what would the Christian apologist wish to say in response to the place of Christianity among the religions?

Michael Green, drawing on his considerable experience as an evangelist, and the resources of much recent writing on the relation between Christianity and other religions, perhaps says all that needs to be said: ‘No faith would enjoy wide currency if it did not contain much that was true. Other faiths therefore constitute a preparation for the gospel, and Christ comes not so much to destroy as to fulfil. The convert will not feel that he has lost his background, but that he has dis¬covered that to which, at its best, it pointed. That is certainly the attitude I have found among friends con¬verted to Christ from Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism. They are profoundly grateful for what they have learned in those cultures, but are thrilled beyond words to have discovered a God who has stooped to their condition in coming as the man of Nazareth, and who has rescued them from guilt and alienation by his cross and resurrection.’ [39]

The Christian attitude to other religions rests firmly upon the doctrines of creation and redemption. Because God created the world, we expect to find traces of him throughout his creation; because God redeemed the world through Christ, we expect to look to Christ for the salvation that the Christian gospel promises. The Lausanne Covenant (1974) states this found¬ational belief in the uniqueness of Christ by rejecting ‘... as derogatory to Christ and the Gospel every kind of syncretism and dialogue which implies that Christ speaks equally through all religions and theologies. Jesus Christ, being himself the only God-man, who gave himself as the only ransom for sinners, is the only mediator between God and man. There is no other name by which we must be saved.’

If God created the world, as the Christian gospel declares, we should not be in the least surprised that he has left witnesses to and traces of this event within that creation. John Calvin made a forceful distinction between the knowledge of God the creator (a universal knowledge, available to all peoples, including Chris¬tians), and knowledge of God the redeemer (a specifically Christian knowledge of God). As the Lausanne Covenant states this:

‘We recognize that all men have some knowledge of God through his general revelation in nature. But we deny that this can save.’ The question therefore becomes: how can we be saved? Who is our saviour? And it is here that the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, grounded in his resurrection, becomes of central import¬ance. No other person has ever been raised from the dead and conquered death. In no other person does God become incar¬nate. So important are these issues that we shall move directly to consider them, and all their implications, in the two sections which follow.

Yet a point must be noted before proceeding. The pluralist agenda has certain important theological and apologetic con¬sequences. It is a simple matter of fact that traditional Christian theology does not lend itself particularly well to the homo¬genizing agenda of religious pluralists. The suggestion that all religions are more or less talking about vaguely the same thing finds itself in difficulty in relation to certain essentially Christian ideas - most notably, the doctrines of the incarnation and Trinity. These distinctive doctrines are embarrassing to those who wish to debunk what they term the ‘myth of Christian uniqueness’. We are invited, on the weak and lazy grounds of -pragmatism, to abandon those doctrines, in order that the pluralist agenda might be advanced.

In response to this pressure, a number of major Christological and theological developments may be noted. Let us note two of them briefly, before exploring them in more detail. First doctrines such as the incarnation, which imply a high profile of identification between Jesus Christ and God, are discarded in favour of various degree Christologies, which are more amenable to the reductionist programme of liberalism. Second, the idea that God is in any sense disclosed or defined Christologically is set to one side, on account of its theologically momentous implications for the identity and significance of Jesus Christ – which liberal pluralism finds an embarrassment. Let us turn to consider, these two points.

First, the idea of the incarnation is rejected, often dismissively, as a myth. Thus John Hick and his collaborators reject the incarnation on various logical and common-sense counts - yet fail to deal with the question of why Christians should have developed this doctrine in the first place. There is an underlying agenda to this dismissal of the incarnation, and a central part of that agenda is the elimination of the sheer distinctiveness of Christianity. A sharp distinction is thus drawn between the historical person Jesus Christ, and the principles which he is alleged to represent. Paul Knitter is but one of a small galaxy of pluralist writers ¬concerned to drive a wedge between the ‘Jesus-event’ (unique Christianity) and the ‘Christ-principle’ (accessible to all religious, traditions, and expressed in their own distinctive, but equally valid, ways).

It is significant that the pluralist agenda forces its advocates to adopt heretical views of Christ in order to meet its needs. In an effort to fit Jesus into the mold of the ‘great religious teachers of humanity’ category, the Ebionite heresy has been revived, and made politically correct. Jesus is one of the religious options available by the great human teachers of religion.

Second, the idea that God is in some manner made known through Christ has been dismissed. Captivated by the image of a, ’Copernican Revolution' (probably one of the most overworked, and misleading phrases in recent writings in this field), pluralists demand that Christians move away from a discussion of Christ to a discussion of God - yet fail to recognize that the ‘God of the, Christians’ (Tertullian) might be rather different from other divinities, and that the doctrine of the Trinity spells out the nature of that distinction. The loose and vague talk about ‘God’ or ‘Reality’ found in much pluralist writing is not a result of, theological sloppiness or confusion. It is a considered response to the recognition that for Christians to talk about the Trinity is to speak about a specific God (not just ‘deity’ in general), who has chosen to make himself known in and through Jesus Christ. It is a deliberate rejection of authentically and distinctive Christian insights into God, in order to suggest that Christianity, to rework a phrase of John Toland, is simply the republication of the religion of nature.

Yet human religious history shows that natural human ideas of the number, nature and character of the gods are notoriously vague and muddled. The Christian emphasis is upon the need to worship, not gods in general (Israel's strictures against Canaanite religion being especially important here), but a God who has chosen to make himself known. The doctrine of the Trinity defines and defends the distinctiveness - no, more than that: the uniqueness - of the ‘God of the Christians’. The New Testament gives a further twist to this development through its language about ‘the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’, locating the identity of God in the actions and passions of Jesus Christ. To put it bluntly: God is Christologically disclosed.

This point is important, given the obvious confusion within the pages of The Myth of Christian Uniqueness concerning the nature and identity of the god(s) or goddess(es) of the pluralists. Plur¬alism, it seems to be, possesses a certain tendency to self-destruc¬tion, in that there is, if I could put it like this, ‘a plurality of pluralisms’. For example, a vigorously polemical defence of ‘pluralism’ (a word used frequently throughout its pages) may be found in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness. According to the authors of this volume, Christianity has to be seen in a ‘pluralistic context as one of the great world faiths, one of the streams of religious life through which human beings can be savingly related to that ultimate Reality Christians know as the heavenly Father’. Yet having agreed that Christianity does not provide absolute or superior knowledge of God, the pluralist contributors to this volume proceed to display such divergence over nature of god that it becomes far from clear that they are talking about the same thing.

But there is a more important point here. Pluralism is fatally vulnerable to the charge that it reaches an accommodation between Christianity and other religious traditions by willfully discarding every distinctive Christian doctrine traditionally regarded as identity-giving and identity-preserving (to say nothing of the reductionist liberties taken with the other religious traditions). The ‘Christianity’ which is declared to be homogenous with all other ‘higher religions’ would not be recognizable as such to most of its adherents. It would be a theologically, Christologically and soteriologically reduced version of real thing. It is thus not Christianity which is being related to other world faiths: it is little more than a parody and caricature this living faith, grounded in the presuppositions and agendas of western liberalism rather than in the self-revelation of God, which is being related to theologically-reduced and homogenized versions of other living religions. Dialogue turns out to involve the sacrifice of integrity. The identity of Christian inextricably linked with the uniqueness of Christ, which is in turn grounded in the resurrection and incarnation. We may now turn to consider these.

Notes:

30 Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: 274 NOTES Eerdmans, 1989), p. 1. The following works should also be consulted: Norman Anderson, Christianity and Comparative Religion (Leicester:Inter-Varsity Press, 1970); Gavin D'Costa, Theology and Religious Plur¬alism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986); Stephen Neill, Christian Faith and Other Faiths (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970); Lesslie Newbigin, The Finality of Christ (London: SCM Press, 1969). These last two works are by leading writers with long experience of the complex Indian situa¬tion, and are especially recommended.

31 Diogenes Allen, Christian Belief in a Pastrnodem World (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989), p. 9.

32 John Milbank, `The End of Dialogue', in G. D'Costa (ed.), Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions (Orbis: Maryknoll, NY, 1990), pp. 174-191; quote at p. 176. This essay merits detailed reading.

33 John Hick, Truth and Dialogue (London: Sheldon Press, 1974), p. 148.

34 John Hick, God and the Universe of Faiths (London: Collins, 1977), p. 146.

35 Hugo Meynell, `On the Idea of a World Theology', Modern Theology 1 (1985), pp. 149-163.

36 Richard Rorty, The Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), p. 166.

37 Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, pp. 9-10.

38 John Hick, The Second Christianity (London: SCM Press, 1988), p. 86.

39 Michael Green, Evangelism and the Local Church (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990), p. 61.

© Alister McGrath, 'Bridge-Building' (IVP, 1992). To purchase this and other excellent IVP books visit ivpbooks.com Used with kind permission of IVP

Suffering

Michael Ramsden

Michael Ramsden is an evangelist and apologist and works as the European Director of the Zacharias Trust, which is the European branch of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

How do you expect me to believe in God, asked Woody Allen, 'when only last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of my electric typewriter?' For a while now, at least in the Western world, the existence of any form of pain, suffering or evil has been regarded as evidence for the non-existence of God. If a good God existed, people say, these things wouldn't. But they do and, therefore, He doesn't.

My job takes me around many different parts of the world in order to answer people's questions about the Christian faith. I find it fascinating that I have never been asked this question in India, which I have visited on many occasions and which certainly knows a lot more about suffering than we do. I find it even more intriguing that Christians who write books in situations where they have known unspeakable torment because of the Gospel also do not normally raise this as an issue for themselves. Why?

There are so many ways in which the question concerning pain can be raised. It can be because of personal loss and pain, or because of a personal interest in the issue of theodicy (the theological term for the question we're looking at here) - to name but two. However, regardless of which way the question is raised, it normally comes down to a moral complaint against God: 'How could you allow this to happen?' The complaint is against God's moral character: 'Can I really trust God if I see this happen?' If you are sure that you can trust Him, regardless of the pain you find yourself in, there is no temptation to turn away from Him, as He is the only one who can help.

First, let's deal with the argument against God's existence. Ravi Zacharias has dealt with this brilliantly in his book Can Man Live Without God? If you argue from the existence of evil to the non-existence of God, you are assuming the existence of an absolute moral law in order for your argument to work. But if there is such a law, then that would also mean that there is such a God, since He is the only one who could give us such a law. And if there is such a God to give us this law, then the argument itself is flawed, since you have had to assume the existence of God in order to argue that He doesn't exist. In short, it is an attempt to invoke the existence of an absolute moral law without invoking the existence of an absolute moral lawgiver, and it cannot be done.

Second, we must also ask the question, which we often fail to do, about what it would take to create a loving world. A world in which love is capable of meaningful expression and experience would also imply a world in which there is choice. If someone tells you that they love you, those words mean something because they are freely given. If you learnt that someone had told you that they loved you and that they had been forced to do it, their words would not mean very much. If you want to create a loving world, you must also create a world in which choices can be exercised. And in such a world, there is also the possibility of choosing a course of action that is not loving, namely evil.

However, these observations do not answer the heart of the question as I think people most commonly ask it. Can I trust God even when faced with great evil? Is He morally trustworthy? Can I trust Him even if I don't understand what is happening?

These are profound questions, and whole books could be written about them. But I would offer one observation for your thoughts: Maybe the reason we question God's moral character when bad things happen is that we live lives largely independent from Him. In other words, do we really trust Him even when things are going well?

I said earlier that I have never been asked questions about God and suffering when I am travelling in countries riddled with the realities of it. In fact, when I visit churches in parts of the world where they are faced daily with the horrific realities of suffering, I normally leave inspired. They trust God in everything, even when things are going well. When times are hard, they cling on to Him because they have already learnt to trust Him. God hasn't changed, even though the circumstances have.

Maybe we struggle with suffering so much in the West because we are so comfortable most of the time that we feel we don't need God. We don't rely on Him on a daily basis, and so we don't really know Him as we should. When suffering comes along, therefore, it is not so much that it takes us away from God, but that it reveals to us that we haven't really been close to Him in the first place.

Obviously we can't address all of the intellectual issues involved here, but, as well as the book already mentioned, let me suggest The Problem of Pain by CS Lewis; God, Freedom and Evil by Alvin Plantinga; and Evil and the Cross by Henri Blocher.

However, what may challenge the critic of God in the face of suffering is not another book on the subject, but rather seeing more lives lived out in dependence on Him, regardless of what is going on around us.

© This article was written by an apologist from The Zacharias Trust and is reproduced with the kind permission of idea magazine where it first appeared.

What about those who've never heard the Gospel?

Mark Pickering

Dr Mark Pickering is the Student Secretary of the UK Christian Medical Fellowship.

You may have experienced it yourself. You're in the middle of a good discussion about gospel issues with a friend. It seems that they understand the main points and are even beginning to grasp the implications for themselves. But just when things seem to be going really well, they wrinkle their forehead and say, 'that's all very well, but what about people in remote tribes that have never heard about Jesus? Surely it's a bit unfair if God's going to send them to hell?' What should you say? Is this the end of a promising conversation or can you reply in a way that will satisfy genuine doubt and still challenge them to respond?

It's certainly an important question. If Jesus really is the only way to God,[2] then we need to have an answer to this, both for our own sanity and for friends who genuinely see it as a problem.

We must start by saying that we do not know for sure. The New Testament never addresses the question directly, as it concerns people who have heard the gospel message. This is something that we should always bear in mind when asked. Asking the question could be a diversionary tactic for friends who are trying to escape the gospel's claims on their lives. We must always emphasise to them that this problem does not excuse them from making a response. Scripture is very clear on what happens to those who knowingly reject the gospel message: He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting punishment and shut out from the presence of the Lord...[3]

Another useful verse on this topic is Deuteronomy 29:29: The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.

This underlines the fact that there are 'secret things', that we do not know everything we would like to, but it also places squarely on our shoulders the responsibility for acting according to the knowledge that we do possess.

Let's look now at some of what we can know from the Bible.

The Justice of God

When someone raises this objection, they are generally implying one of two things: either that other religions must be valid routes to God, or that an exclusive gospel suggests some great miscarriage of justice at the final judgment. God is depicted as saying, 'You didn't accept Jesus, so you can go to hell!' whilst multitudes of poor unfortunates reply 'Who? We never heard of this guy. You can't do that!'

The God of the Bible is a God of justice, not some capricious being who casts people into hell on a whim, depending on the mood he is in that day. Isaiah tells us that 'the Lord is a God of justice'.[4] He is also 'the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness'.[5] There is no question that what he does on that final day will be fair, even though we may not understand all of his thoughts. We can be like Abraham in front of Sodom and confidently assert, 'will not the Judge of all the earth do right?'[6]

General Revelation

Although many people do not know the full revelation of the gospel, none of us are totally ignorant of him. 'For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.'[7] The created universe speaks so clearly of a Creator that it took rebellious humans thousands of years to come up with a half-decent explanation of how things might have arisen without any intelligent designer, in the neo-Darwinian synthesis. The psalmist exclaims that 'the heavens declare the glory of God'[8] and we really have to be quite blinded by naturalist philosophy before we can take a walk in the country or gaze at the night sky and not see something of God's creative flair reflected there.

Then there is the witness of our consciences. Though defective since the fall, they still function and give us a sense of a moral order, a morality that we generally know to be correct, even though we fail to live up to it. Paul, in his treatment of God's righteous judgment, tells us that 'Gentiles, who do not have the law...show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness'.[9]

Hence there is no-one that is totally ignorant of God. All of us have some knowledge of him and will be judged according to that. God 'will give to each person according to what he has done',[10] not according to what he had no opportunity to do.

The Old Testament Heroes

We see this principle at work in the pages of the Old Testament. We know that there will be thousands of Jews and Gentiles who lived before the time of Jesus yet will still be part of that 'great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language'.[11] Jesus described Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as feasting in the kingdom of heaven [12] while heaven itself is described as being at Abraham's side.[13]

They clearly did not know the whole gospel message, although there are a few tantalising verses that indicate they may have known more than is explicitly recorded in Scripture. We are told that Moses 'regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt'.[14] How exactly did he view the coming Messiah - how much did he understand what he would do? We do not know.

Christ's sacrificial death on the cross hundreds of years later seems to have acted retrospectively for them.[15] This should not seem strange to us, as God is independent of time and would have no problem looking forward to what Jesus would later do on their behalf. The fact that they did not fully understand the mechanism is not a problem for us. I drive my car and use my computer without understanding all the inner workings that make it possible.

If their lack of knowledge before Christ's first coming was not an absolute barrier to salvation, is there any reason why sheer lack of knowledge after this time should be an absolute barrier? Those who have really never heard the gospel today are in a similar position to those who lived before Christ. Is it not possible for them to respond to the knowledge of God they do have in the way those heroes did?

The Need for Evangelism

Before any of you cry 'heretic', let's clarify a few things that we are not saying. Firstly, we are not saying that 'all roads lead to God'. Jesus told us that 'no one comes to the Father except through me' [16] and Peter preached that 'salvation is found in no one else'.[17] If anyone of another religion or belief system is saved, it is not because of their beliefs but in spite of those beliefs. All other religions are distortions of the truth, but still contain some truth. If by the guidance of the Holy Spirit a person looks through that distorted lense, glimpses a dim reflection of reality and responds accordingly, it does not validate that false religion as a whole, but simply the truth that lies buried underneath.

For instance, if a Muslim reads of 'Isa (Jesus) in the Qur'an and learns of his sinless life [18] and the fact that he is a spirit from God,[19] it is just possible that he may grasp that Jesus is in fact greater than Muhammad, who needed God's forgiveness for his sin.[20] This does not however mean that Islam is a valid route to God; only that the Holy Spirit can work in anyone.

The second major point is that this thinking in no way lessens the urgent need for evangelism or mission. It is not to say, 'don't bother with evangelism - they can all be saved anyway'. The heroes of the Old Testament were the exceptions of their time and the shining examples - not just average people. Even in Judaism that had God's true Scriptures and prophets, that had witnessed his miracles, multitudes still went astray and did not follow God. The psalmist lamented that 'everyone has turned away, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one'.[21] If the response to God's revelation at the time was generally so low, there will be far fewer still who will find God's path in the midst of false religions and ideologies.

The gospel is needed to clarify and instruct. The Ninevites were clearly prepared to respond to God, but they didn't know much about him. It took the preaching of Jonah to turn them to repentance and faith.[22] The Ethiopian eunuch, even though he was reading the prophecy of Isaiah, needed to have it explained to him by Philip before he could see it was really pointing to Christ.[23]

Today multitudes are blinded and confused by wrong ideas about God. Our task as Christians is to hold up the light of the gospel, bringing true teaching about who God is and how we may know him. The Gospel is God's chosen means of disturbing the complacent, bringing conviction of sin and calling men to himself. Those who hear his call are in a far better position to seek after God for mercy and forgiveness.

The Honest Seeker

Jesus promises that those who do seek after God will find him.[24] This may mean that they will come to hear the good news about Jesus in this life. But clearly that wasn't the case for the Old Testament characters. It may therefore mean that such people can live without any assurance of forgiveness and yet are forgiven by God through the atoning death of Jesus, after casting themselves on God for his mercy. The Gospel then would bring such seekers not so much forgiveness itself as the assurance of being forgiven.

Summary

Only God knows how individuals will fare on the Day of Judgment. Such matters are no proper concern of ours. 'It is mine to avenge', says the Lord, 'I will repay'.[25] Yet we have every reason to believe that God will do what is right. Everyone has enough knowledge of God in order to seek after him but the general situation is that men do not, even though their consciences condemn them.

Hence we are called to proclaim the gospel and urge that men and women be reconciled to God. 'We are therefore Christ's ambassadors... We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.'[26] Those who have heard the gospel and still reject God's offer of forgiveness are in grave danger: If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.[27] The question of 'what about those who've never heard?' can provide no comfort for anyone who is avoiding the implications of the gospel for themselves. Yet these people will be judged on a totally different basis from those who while remaining in substantial darkness earnestly seek the truth, confess their sins and cast themselves on the mercy of God. We must pray that God will guide them to the truth. We must also remember that if the church through the ages and today had taken seriously Jesus' command to make disciples of all nations,[28] there would be far fewer groping in spiritual darkness. If we really grasp the implications of this issue, we will be challenged more than ever to follow Paul's example and 'preach the gospel where Christ [is] not known'.[29] We will be committed to evangelism and world mission, through praying, giving and going, so that 'the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.'[30]

This article is based on material in CMF's Confident Christianity Course

References

1. Based on the Confident Christianity evangelism training course, online at http://www.cmf.org.uk/outreach/content.asp?context=issue&id=15

2. See Pickering M, Saunders P. Deadly Questions - Is Jesus the Only Way? Nucleus 2001; October:29-33

3. 2 Thes 1:8,9

4. Is 30:18. See also Ps 9:16, 103:6; Is 61:8

5. Ex 34:6. See also Ps 36:5; Je 33:11; 2 Cor 13:11

6. Gn 18:25

7. Rom 1:20

8. Ps 19:1

9. Rom 2:14,15

10. Rom 2:6

11. Rev 7:9

12. Mt 8:11

13. Lk 16:23

14. Heb 11:26. See also Jn 8:56

15. Rom 3:25; Heb 9:15

16. Jn 14:6

17. Acts 4:12

18. Surah 19:19

19. Surah 4:171

20. Surah 48:2

21. Ps 53:3

22. Jon 3

23. Acts 8:26-39

24. Mt 7:7

25. Rom 12:19

26. 2 Cor 5:20

27. Heb 10:26,27

28. Mt 28:19

29. Rom 15:20

30. Hab 2:14.39

© This article is reproduced from the Christian Medical Fellowship's website ( cmf.org.uk ) - used with permission