Posted on 11/24/2013 3:01:00 PM PST by NYer
Ronald Knox once quipped that "the study of comparative religions is the best way to become comparatively religious."
The reason, as G. K. Chesterton says, is that, according to most "scholars" of comparative religion, "Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism."
But any Christian who does apologetics must think about comparative religions because the most popular of all objections against the claims of Christianity today comes from this field. The objection is not that Christianity is not true but that it is not the truth; not that it is a false religion but that it is only a religion. The world is a big place, the objector reasons; "different strokes for different folks". How insufferably narrow-minded to claim that Christianity is the one true religion! God just has to be more open-minded than that.
This is the single most common objection to the Faith today, for "today" worships not God but equality. It fears being right where others are wrong more than it fears being wrong. It worships democracy and resents the fact that God is an absolute monarch. It has changed the meaning of the word honor from being respected because you are superior in some way to being accepted because you are not superior in any way but just like us. The one unanswerable insult, the absolutely worst name you can possibly call a person in today's society, is "fanatic", especially "religious fanatic". If you confess at a fashionable cocktail party that you are plotting to overthrow the government, or that you are a PLO terrorist or a KGB spy, or that you molest porcupines or bite bats' heads off, you will soon attract a buzzing, fascinated, sympathetic circle of listeners. But if you confess that you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, you will find yourself suddenly alone, with a distinct chill in the air.
Here are twelve of the commonest forms of this objection, the odium of elitism, with answers to each.
 Christianity is not a system of man's search for God but a story of God's search for man. True religion is not like a cloud of incense wafting up from special spirits into the nostrils of a waiting God, but like a Father's hand thrust downward to rescue the fallen. |
The Church has found a third way, implied in the New Testament texts. On the one hand, no one can be saved except through Christ. On the other hand, Christ is not only the incarnate Jewish man but also the eternal, preexistent word of God, "which enlightens every man who comes into the world" (Jn 1:9). |
The Second Vatican Council took a position on comparative religions that distinguished Catholicism from both Modernist relativism and Fundamentalist exclusivism. It taught that on the one hand there is much deep wisdom and value in other religions and that the Christian should respect them and learn from them. But, on the other hand, the claims of Christ and his Church can never be lessened, compromised, or relativized. We may add to our religious education by studying other religions but never subtract from it.
Ping!
Read this.
I have read the Koran, the Upanishads, the Gita and the various Buddhist text.
There are so many differences between religious ideas that it is simply laughable to say “They all teach the same thing.
Exhibit one: Buddhism and Hinduism believe that the universe is not real. Every thing we see, everything we feel is an illusion. The concept of Nirvana is a perfect vacuum and they mean an absolute lack of anything type of vacuum.
Judaism, Christianity, Islam and various forms of Animism (Nature worship) all believe that the universe is real and can be interacted with in areal way.
There is no way to harmonize those two positions. They are mutually exclusive.
Just my soapbox on this issue.
That said, the author of the original article contradicts himself when he attempts to champion one religion as "the only way" and then answers the question, "Are non-Christians all damned then?" with this:
No. Father Feeny was excommunicated by the Catholic Church for teaching that "outside the Church, no salvation" meant outside the visible Church. God does not punish pagans unjustly. He does not punish them for not believing in a Jesus they never heard of, through no fault of their own (invincible ignorance). But God, who is just, punishes them for sinning against the God they do know through nature and conscience (see Rom 1-2). There are no innocent pagans, and there are no innocent Christians either. All have sinned against God and against conscience. All need a Savior. Christ is the Savior
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13For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, 14in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
15He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. 18He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. 19For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, 20and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.
- Colossians 1
There is no contradiction in the sense we can’t have many roads to the mountaintop because if that were the case the life and death of the Christ would have been superfluous.
What sadistic God would send His only Beloved Son to be born in a stable, tortured, and crucified between two thieves, if there were other paths to paradise as well? This is why Christ said “No one comes to the Father except through Me,” “I Am the Life and the Resurrection,” “I am the Living Bread,” and gave St. Peter and the rest of His disciples, the Great Commission to go fort and “teach all nations…” This is one truth, one teaching. The rest, as Hillaire Belloc so ably argues and explains in his book, “Heresies,” the rest have no basis of faith, informed by reason, and historical text and tradition.” Nor have they a central Catechism of truth informed by a Church that Christ founded and assured us that the “gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.”
One either accepts or rejects this. As for pagans, who have not been so informed and those who died before the birth and resurrection of Christ, the author of redemption died for those living and dead, pagans included, for the Natural Law of God separated man from beast.
An absurd assertion (as the article correctly points out). While as an atheist, I'm on the "outside looking in" when it comes to the various religions of the world, I'd have to be either blind or willfully ignorant not to acknowledge the very real differences between them.
The author, Peter Kreeft, is someone I greatly respect. It is because of his writings that my husband became pro-life.
The article concludes: "We may add to our religious education by studying other religions but never subtract from it."
History is full of men who have claimed that they came from God, or that they were gods, or that they bore messages from God - Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, Christ, Lao-tze, and thousands of others, right down to the person who founded a new religion this very day. Each of them has a right to be heard and considered. But as a yardstick external to and outside of whatever is to be measured is needed, so there must be some permanent tests available to all men, all civilizations, and all ages, by which they can decide whether any of these claimants, or all of them, are justified in their claims. These tests are of two kinds: reason and history. Reason, because everyone has it, even those without faith; history, because everyone lives in it and should know something about it.Reason dictates that if any one of these men actually came from God, the least thing that God could do to support His claim would be to pre-announce His coming. Automobile manufacturers tell their customers when to expect a new model. If God sent anyone from Himself, or if He came Himself with a vitally important message for all men, it would seem reasonable that He would first let men know when His messenger was coming, where He would be born, where He would live, the doctrine He would teach, the enemies He would make, the program He would adopt for the future, and the manner of His death. By the extent to which the messenger conformed with these announcements, one could judge the validity of his claims.
Reason further assures us that if God did not do this, then there would be nothing to prevent any impostor from appearing in history and saying, "I come from God," or "An angel appeared to me in the desert and gave me this message." In such cases there would be no objective, historical way of testing the messenger. We would have only his word for it, and of course he could be wrong.
If a visitor came from a foreign country to Washington and said he was a diplomat, the government would ask him for his passport and other documents testifying that he represented a certain government. His papers would have to antedate his coming. If such proofs of identity are asked from delegates of other countries, reason certainly ought to do so with messengers who claim to have come from God. To each claimant reason says, "What record was there before you were born that you were coming?"
With this test one can evaluate the claimants. Socrates had no one to foretell his birth. Buddha had no one to pre-announce him and his message or tell the day when he would sit under the tree. Confucius did not have the name of his mother and his birthplace recorded, nor were they given to men centuries before he arrived so that when he did come, men would know he was a messenger from God. But, with Christ, it was different. Because of the OT prophecies, His coming was not unexpected. There were no predictions about Buddha, Confucius, Lao-tze, Mohammed , or anyone else; but there were predictions about Christ. Others just came and said, "Here I am, believe me". Christ alone stepped out of that line saying, "Search the writings of the Jewish people and the related history of the Babylonians, Persians, and Romans." Even the pagan, Tacitus, speaking for the ancient Romans, says, "People were generally persuaded in the faith of the ancient prophecies, that the East was to prevail, and that from Judea was to come the Master and Ruler of the world." China had the same expectations, as did the Greeks.
Another distinguishing fact is that once He appeared, He struck history with such impact that He split it in two, dividing it into two periods: one before His coming, the other after it. Buddha did not do this, nor any of the great Indian philosophers. Even those who deny God must date their attacks upon Him, A.D. so and so, or so many years after His coming.
The story of every human life begins with birth and ends with death. In the Person of Christ, however, it was His death that was first and His life that was last. It was not so much that His birth cast a shadow on His life and thus led to His death; it was rather that the Cross was first, and cast its shadow back to His birth. His has been the only life in the world that was ever lived backward.
Fulton Sheen - ref
bump
The Christian Church is in competition with other religions because they refer to them selves as a religion.
I do not know why they insist on calling them selves religious.
Maybe it is because they believe that man has to have a religion of some kind, so who is going to join anything with out a religion.
Did Jesus use the word religious except when he was referring to the false Church leaders of his day?
Religion comes from the word ritual, i have heard the worshipers of the pagan Gods were famous for ritual.
James used the word religion one time.
James 1:27
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
How many times times does any minister even read the above scripture, yet religion is all you hear about when Christianity is talked about.
If some one is in competition with whores would it not be assumed they are also whores?
But, with Christ, it was different. Because of the OT prophecies, His coming was not unexpected.
Absolutely. He is brilliant and one of my favorite Christians philosophers, along with Francis Schaeffer and C.S. Lewis. Interesting that of those three, one is a Calvinist, one an Arminian and the other a Catholic. All are very Christian.
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