Martin Luther once said, "Anything that one imagines of God apart from Christ is only useless thinking and vain idolatry." However, a number of today's so-called "Christian" leaders would take issue with that statement.

Recently, in a lively televised debate concerning the exclusivity of the Gospel, MSNBC's Donahue featured Joseph Hough, president of Union Theological Seminary of Richmond. saying: "I am a Christian. I believe in Jesus as the one who showed me the way. But I would be the last person to be so arrogant as to assert that my God has so little imagination that he or she could not reach out to other people in other cultures and other ways."

A Pentecostal bishop in Tulsa, Carlton Pearson, author of a variety of books and even a Dove award nominee, continues to stir tremendous controversy among Pentecostals by saying, "The finished work of Christ redeemed all of humanity, not just Christians back to God ....The whole world is already saved -- they just don't know it."

Clearly, New Testament Christianity confronts a modern world that is broadminded in its reception of different faiths. We are like the Romans whom Edward Gibbon sarcastically described in Decline of the Roman Empire: "To the people all religions were equally true; to the philosophers all religions were equally false; and to the politicians all religions were equally useful." This is the same spirit of our age -- a spirit that now undermines the faithful witness of the Church.

Is Jesus Christ the only way to God? Will those who reject the Gospel message be eternally lost? Or is this simply the belief of Christian bigots?

To the surprise of many, the belief that Jesus is the only way did not originate with divisive people who wanted the wrath of God to fall on those who disagreed. The claim actually came from Jesus and was repeated by His apostles.

Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me" (Jn. 14:6). He also said, "For unless you believe that I am He, you shall die in your sins" (Jn. 8:24).

The Apostle Peter echoed these words, saying, "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). St. Paul agreed saying, "There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."(I Tim. 2:5).

It is without question, the united witness of the New Testament that no one can know God except through the person of Christ.

Another witness to Christ as the only way is the testimony of the first Christians who were martyred. What was it that motivated innumerable followers of Christ in a religiously pluralistic and liberal-minded society like Rome to give their lives for Him? If a Christian would just take a pinch of incense and place it on a fire before a graven image of Caesar, his life would be spared. Instead Christians chose to die of unspeakable tortures. Why? It was because they were unwilling for Jesus to be just another god in a Roman pantheon. To them, He was the one true God and there was none other besides Him. For that faith they were willing to seal their testimony with their blood!

Still, there is one other reason why we ought to believe in Christ as our only hope. Josh McDowell used this example: Suppose a group is taking a hike in a very dense forest and gets lost. Realizing that they've taken the wrong path means they will lose their lives. So, they become afraid.

But they soon notice ahead in the distance where the trail splits, there are two human forms at the fork in the road. Running up to these two people, they note that one has a park ranger's uniform on and is standing there healthy and alive, while the other is laying face down, dead.

Now which of the two are they going to ask the way out? Obviously, the one who is living. When it comes to eternal matters, it's best to ask the one who is alive the way out. This is not Muhammad, not Confucius, but Jesus Christ. The greatest proof that Jesus is the only way to God is His resurrection from the dead.

The resurrection of Christ is one of the best-attested events in human history. Thomas Arnold, author of the famous three-volume History of Rome, appointed to the chair of modern history at Oxford, and certainly a man well acquainted with the value of evidence in determining historical facts, said: "I have been used for many years to study the histories of other times, and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair enquirer, than the great sign which God hath given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead." Numerous other prestigious scholars of history and law down through the centuries would concur.

Indeed, Jesus is the only way to God! In the days of Noah, there was no salvation outside of the Ark. In the days of Moses, there was no deliverance except for those who were under the blood. And in our day, there is no redemption outside of Christ.

Articles: Christian Particularism

"No Other Name"
A Middle Knowledge Perspective on the Exclusivity of Salvation Through Christ: The conviction of the New Testament writers was that there is no salvation apart from Jesus. This orthodox doctrine is widely rejected today because God's condemnation of persons in other world religions seems incompatible with various attributes of God. Analysis reveals the real problem to involve certain counterfactuals of freedom, e.g., why did not God create a world in which all people would freely believe in Christ and be saved? Such questions presuppose that God possesses middle knowledge. But it can be shown that no inconsistency exists between God's having middle knowledge and certain persons' being damned; on the contrary, it can be positively shown that these two notions are compatible.
Should Peter Go to the Mission Field?: In an article in Faith and Philosophy 8 (1991), pp. 380-89, William Hasker related the cases of a veteran missionary, Paul, and a prospective missionary, Peter, who were each reflecting upon the implications of a middle knowledge perspective on the exclusivity of salvation through Christ for their missionary tasks. Peter, in some confusion, wrote to Paul for advice concerning whether he should leave his successful pastorate for the foreign field. Paul's response to Peter's letter has been obtained and is here published.
Middle Knowledge and Christian Exclusivism: David Hunt has criticized a middle knowledge perspective on Christian exclusivism on evangelistic and metaphysical grounds. He argues that from a middle knowledge perspective attempts to evangelize another person are either futile or superfluous and that an omnibenevolent God would have created a post-mortem state of the blessed without ever creating any of the damned. Hunt?s evangelistic objection is unfounded because by our evangelistic efforts we may bring it about that people are saved who otherwise would not have been saved. Hunt?s metaphysical objection errs in thinking that God judges people on the basis of what they would do rather than what they in fact do.
Politically Incorrect Salvation: Contemporary religious pluralism regards the traditional Christian doctrine of salvation through Christ alone as unconscionable. The problem seems to be that the existence of an all-loving and all-powerful God seems incompatible with the claim that persons who do not hear and embrace the gospel of salvation through Christ will be damned. Closer analysis reveals the problem to be counterfactual in nature: God could not condemn persons who, though freely rejecting God's sufficient grace for salvation revealed through nature and conscience, would have received His salvific grace mediated through the gospel. In response, it may be pointed out that God's being all-powerful does not guarantee that He can create a world in which all persons freely embrace His salvation and that His being all-loving does not entail that, even if such a world were feasible for Him, God would prefer such a world over a world in which some persons freely reject His salvation. Furthermore, it is possible that God has created a world having an optimal balance between saved and lost and that God has so providentially ordered the world that those who fail to hear the gospel and be saved would not have freely responded affirmatively to it even if they had heard it.
Talbott's Universalism: Thomas Talbott rejects the Free Will Defense against the soteriological problem of evil because (i) it is incoherent to claim that someone could freely and irrevocably reject God, and (ii) in any case, God would not permit such a choice to be made because it would pain the saved. I argue that a Molinist account escapes Talbott's objections. It is possible both that in no world realizable by God do all persons freely accept salvation and that God alone will endure the pain of knowledge of the lost.
Talbott's Universalism Once More: In the debate between universalism and particularism, three questions need to be addressed: (I) Has it been shown that it is inconsistent to affirm both that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent and that some persons do not receive Christ and are damned? (II) Can these two affirmations be shown to be consistent? (III) Is it plausible that both affirmations are true? In this on-going debate with Thomas Talbott, I argue that Talbott has failed to show the above affirmations to be inconsistent, that while one cannot prove them to be consistent, it is plausible that they are, and that it is also plausible that both affirmations are in fact true.

Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment?: A Debate Between William ... is a lively and provocative debate between Christian philosopher and apologist William Lane Craig and New Testament scholar and atheist Gerd Ludemann. This published version of a debate originally set at Boston College invites the responses of two additional scholars on either side of the debate. Robert Gundry, a New Testament scholar, and Stephen Davis, a philosopher, argue in support of a historical and actual resurrection, while Michael Goulder and Roy Hoover, both New Testament scholars, offer their support for Luedemann's view that the "resurrection" was based on the guilt-induced visionary experience of the disciples.

Contemporary Scholarship and the Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ

Phil Donahue Ridicules Christian Salvation Doctrine

A Pentecostal bishop in Tulsa, Carlton Pearson, author of a variety of books and even a Dove award nominee, continues to stir tremendous controversy among Pentecostals by saying, "The finished work of Christ redeemed all of humanity, not just Christians back to God ....The whole world is already saved -- they just don't know it."

Didn't know the Pentecostals had any bishops. But this one doesn't surprise me much. It isn't all that big a step from Arminianism to universalism, as jude24 pointed out so succinctly in his #9.

What was it that motivated innumerable followers of Christ in a religiously pluralistic and liberal-minded society like Rome to give their lives for Him? If a Christian would just take a pinch of incense and place it on a fire before a graven image of Caesar, his life would be spared. Instead Christians chose to die of unspeakable tortures. Why? It was because they were unwilling for Jesus to be just another god in a Roman pantheon. To them, He was the one true God and there was none other besides Him. For that faith they were willing to seal their testimony with their blood!

A great summation of how early Christians established their testimony despite Rome's persecution. So many people don't understand that this is what it meant to be a Christian in the unofficially polytheistic Roman empire which officially tolerated only one god, the Roman emperor. So, in accepting martyrdom for their faith, the early Christians were defying all the false unofficial religions but were also rebels to the authority of the state-established religion, the genius of the emperor. In this sense, they defied all the pagan religions and Judaism and the Roman empire. They paid with their lives but they thrived and won.

This is exactly the situation that I often refer to when the Roman pope voluntarily kisses a Koran which denies the divinity and the resurrection of Christ. Or when he allows Buddhists to bless him. Or prays with a weird assortment of shamanistic cults. Or...

An Orthodox Christian believes Christ is the only way

Eighteen-year-old Evgeny Rodionov was taken captive with three other soldiers at night of February 14th, not far from the Chechen settlement of Galashki. The guys arrived from the Kaliningrad region. They patrolled the border between the republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia. Their control and registration post was located some 200 meters far from the security detachment. The post was just a small cabin, without any light or wire communication. The cabin did not even have a military support, in spite of the fact that it was a single cabin on the mountainous road, which was used for carrying weapons, ammunition, captives, drugs and so on.

The border guards stopped an ambulance vehicle to check it. More than ten armed Chechens got out of the vehicle. Needless to mention that it was very easy for them to cope with young inexperienced soldiers. The guys showed as much resistance as they could, but the outcome of the fight was evident before it even started. "Experience showed that the Chechen captivity is the most horrid, the most inhuman and barbaric thing that can ever happen,” Lubov Rodionova believes.

As soon as she learned that her son was a captive of Chechen guerrillas, she started looking for him all over Chechnya for nine months. She had to go through every horror imaginable. “I think that God was watching over me. I was walking along mined roads, but I did not step on a bomb. He protected me from bombings, he did not let me die, because my duty was to find my son, to bury him on his native land, according to Christian traditions. I have realized that recently. When I was walking along those military roads, I just kept silence, praying to God in my heart.”

Chechen bandits murdered Evgeny Rodionov on May 23, 1996 in the Chechen settlement of Bamut. Russian troops occupied the village the next day. Lubov Rodionova learned about her son’s death only in September. She had to put a mortgage on her own apartment in order to find Evgeny’s body and to take it away along with the bodies of his murdered friends. A Chechen man agreed to show her the place, where Evgeny was buried. She had to pay him a lot of money for that. “When I came to Chechnya in the middle of February, a living private cost ten million rubles. This price was 50 million in August. A friend of mine was told to pay 250 million rubles for her son, since he was an officer. It was nighttime, when I and some sappers were digging the pit, in which the bodies of four Russian soldiers were thrown. I was praying all the time, hoping that my Evgeny was not going to be there. I could not and did not want to believe that he was murdered. When we were taking out the remnants, I recognized his boots. However, I still refused to accept the fact of his death, until someone found his cross. Then I fainted.”

Evgeny Rodionov was murdered by Ruslan Khaikhoroyev. This bandit confessed that himself. “Your son had a choice to stay alive. He could convert to Islam, but he did not agree to take his cross off. He also tried to escape once,” said Khaikhoroyev. Evgeny's head was cut off by the bandit, who gave the videotape of the beheading to his mother.

When Lubov Rodionova came back home, Evgeny’s father died five days after the funeral. He could not stand the loss of his son.

Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov, acting chairman of the Moscow Patriarchy department for cooperation with the Armed Forces, says that Evgeny Rodionov will definitely be canonized. The adequate inquiry has already been made, although more information about Evgeny's fate is needed. Father Dmitry said that Evgeny would be canonized as soon as the information was collected.

A sign in memory of the brave Russian border guard was put at the entrance to the school, where he studied. There was also a documentary released about him. The writings on Evgeny’s grave cross run: “Russian soldier Evgeny Rodionov is buried here. He defended his Fatherland and did not disavow Christ. He was executed on May 23, 1996, on the outskirts of Bamut.”

The Russian patriotic press has already reported about the deed of a 19-year-old Russian soldier, Evgeny Rodionov. This young man found himself in the Chechen captivity in 1996. He did not betray either his fatherland or his faith. He did not take off his cross even at the hardest moment of beastly tortures. The state decorated Evgeny with the Order of Courage. People’s donations made it possible to put a two-meter high Orthodox cross on his grave. People come to visit his grave from most distant parts of Russia. His mother, Lubov Rodionova, says that people’s attitude changed her entire awareness of life. A WWII veteran once came to visit Evgeny’s grave. He took off his military decoration – the Bravery Medal – and put in on the tombstone.

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