Christian Exclusivisim: Jesus is the Only Way to God? Why?

The reasonableness of Christian Exclusivism
Having seen that the Bible clearly teaches Exclusivism, it is now time to philosophically show the reasonableness of the biblical teaching that sins deserve eternal punishment, and therefore if anyone is going to be forgiven the penalty for their sins must be paid by a substitute. While my aim here is not yet to prove that Christianity is true, I do believe that this section will show that if any religion at all is true, it must be Christianity.

In an excellent work entitled Concerning the Necessity and Reasonableness of the Christian Doctrine of Satisfaction for Sin, Jonathan Edwards (regarded by many to be the greatest American philosopher/theologian to ever live) gives four main arguments establishing the necessity of sins being punished. We will examine three of them and apply them to show that, based upon the truth that sin must be punished, Christianity is the only possible true religion.

The first argument is from our sense of justice. Sins must be punished because sin deserves punishment. Could we really respect God if He smiled down on Adolf Hitler and Charles Mansons and said "That's okay, guys. Do whatever you want, as long as you're having fun"? Our minds recoil at such a thought! And if there is no God at all, the situation is even worse: the terrible evils of Hitler and such people will never be recompensed. Justice would never be served. But it would be hypocritical to single out people like Hitler as deserving of punishment and ignore our own sins. We all know that we have each sinned, and therefore if we are going to believe that the terrible crimes of people like Hitler need to be recompensed, our sins need to be recompensed as well. This is where Edward's first argument comes in:

1. God's justice is His commitment to love and uphold the orderly connections which He has established in the universe.
2. There is a connection between sin and punishment such that sin deserves punishment.
3. Thus, if God did not judge sin He would be contradicting this connection and thus violating His justice. A God who did not judge sin would not be maintaining order in His kingdom.
4. Therefore, if God is to remain just, He must punish sin.

This, of course, raises a problem. Since everybody has sinned, how can anyone be forgiven? The only possible answer is that somebody else must take this punishment for us. This is what we saw earlier. Christ died in the place of those who would come to believe in Him, thus canceling their penalty. No other religion upholds justice in the solution it gives to the human problem of sin. All other religions either deny that sin is as serious as we all know it is, deny that sin is evil at all (which also goes against our common sense), or provide forgiveness to humans without proper compensation to justice. Christianity is the only religion that does justice to our sense of justice.

Edward's next argument is from the holiness of God.

1. God is holy.
2. Sin is unholy, and therefore God is the utter contradiction of sin.
3. This means that God is opposed to sin, since it contradicts His nature.
4. If God is opposed to sin by nature, He must express that opposition in the world, for otherwise creation would not answer the reality of God's nature.
5. Therefore, if God did not punish sin, He would be contradicting His holiness and thereby denying Himself.

Christianity is the only religion with a God who is truly holy. Hinduism believes in many gods (or that god is impersonal) and most forms of Buddhism don't even believe in God. These "gods" (or lack of gods) do not claim to be so great that they are of infinite worth and holiness, the utter contradiction of all sin. Islam believes in one God, and does claim that this God is holy. However, the god of Islam saves people without satisfying His holiness by punishing their sin. Thus, the god of Islam contradicts himself and thus is not truly holy. These three examples illustrate this truth: in all other religions, the god worshiped either doesn't claim to be holy, or claims to be holy but contradicts this claim in the way he provides salvation from sin. Neither kind of god(s) would be worth worshiping. And surely if there is a God, He must be holy. Christianity is the only religion that can honestly claim they worship a holy God.

Edward's third argument is from the infinite honor and worth of God.

1. God's glory is of infinite value and worth.
2. Therefore, God must maintain the value and honor of His glory in order to be righteous.
3. Sin is an attack on God's glory. It dishonors God's infinite worth.
4. Therefore, if sin is treated as inconsequential, God's glory is treated as inconsequential.
5. Thus, God must punish sin in order to uphold His honor. For if He did not, He would be denying His infinite worth and thus would be committing unrighteousness.

From what we have seen earlier, again we must conclude that the Christian view is the only one worthy of God. For all other religions end up denying the infinite worth of the Supreme Being, and why should we accept a religion with such a cheap God? Could we really call that being "supreme"? But you may be wondering, how do other religions dishonor God's worth? Because they present God as forgiving sin without vindicating the worth of His glory. Christianity is the only religion which believes that God became man in the Person of Christ, who then, as man, died on the cross. Since Christ is fully God and fully man, He is of infinite value and thus He fully vindicated the worth of God's infinite glory in His suffering. But, you may ask again, what about the religions who don't believe in a God who is of infinite honor, or perhaps the regions that don't believe in God at all? How can you say that the gods in those religions would be violating their honor, for they don't have any honor to uphold? But to this I respond again, would such a god, who has no honor, be worth worshiping? He would not even be worthy of the name God.

The fact of God's infinite value also allows us to answer the objection presented by theologians such as Clark Pinnock and John Stott, that "eternal punishment is disproportionate to a finite life of sinning" (Piper, p. 127). These theologians neglect the fact that "degrees of blameworthiness come not from how long you offend dignity, but from how high the dignity is that you offend" (Piper). As Edwards pointed out in his sermon, "The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners," since God is of infinite value, and all sins are ultimately committed against God, all sins therefore deserve an infinite penalty. Thus, the Christian doctrine of eternal punishment is not only consistent with justice, but is required by justice.

Conclusive Evidence for Christian Exclusivism
Thus, it seems that if any religion at all is true, it must be Christianity. But if we approach the question from a slightly different angle, there is even more concrete and solid evidence for accepting Christianity over any other religion. First, remember that earlier we saw how all religions cannot be true because they all contradict each other. Christianity teaches that Jesus is God and man, that He died on the cross for sins, and then rose from the dead. All other religions deny these truths (there may be some religions which accept one of these truths, but none accept all three of them). Thus, all religions cannot be true any more than 2+2 can equal both 4 and 5 at the same time. John Hick's attempt to provide a framework that synthesizes all religions fails because it ignores the fact that Christianity is based upon real-life historical events: the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ. They only way to make Christianity consistent with other religions would be to change history.

How, then, are we to know which religion is correct? By a simple test: which religion gives the best evidence for its truth?

Christianity is the religion that gives the best evidence for its truth. We saw some good evidence from our analysis of Edward's, but now I wish to provide even more conclusive evidence: Jesus is the only religious leader who has risen from the dead. All other religious leaders are still in their tombs. Who would you believe--a religious leader who conquered death, or a religious leader who was defeated by death?

One may object that I am begging the question, for the way we know that Jesus is from the dead is that the Bible teaches it. Aren't I using the Bible to prove the Bible? No, I am not. One of the most fascinating and compelling things is that the resurrection of Christ can be historically demonstrated using only the facts that critical scholars accept. Thus, we do not need to assume the trustworthiness of the Bible to have good evidence for the resurrection. It is a solid historical fact. For a good demonstration of this, see, for example, the debate between Antony Flew, an atheist, and Gary Habermas, a Christian, in the book Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?

Therefore, since Christ rose from the dead, His claim to be the only way to God seems to be verified: "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, except through me." In fact, Christ not only claimed to be the only way to God, He claimed to be God (John 10:30). Thus, the resurrection of Christ proves that there is in fact a God and that Jesus is the only way to be saved by God, for it validates the truth of all that Jesus said.

Objections to Christian Exclusivism
In conclusion, let us briefly examine the main objections to Christian Exclusivism.

• Christianity is narrow minded. Just because something is narrow and exclusive does not make it wrong. Life is full of things that are narrow and true. For example, we want the airplane pilot to land on the runway, not the highway. Truth is always exclusive of error. Two plus two equals four is a narrow statement, but it is still right.

• Truth changes from person to person. Sometimes people say "It may be true for you, but it is not true for me." But simply believing something cannot make it true, and simply disbelieving something cannot make it false. Truth exists independent of our beliefs. For example, people used to believe that the earth was flat, but that did not make it flat--it was still round. Jesus' statement in John 14:6, "No one comes to the Father, but through Me," is a universal truth. It applies to everyone, even if they do not believe it. And since Jesus is God and rose from the dead, He has the authority to say this.

• It doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you are sincere. A common belief today is that God will accept people no matter what they believe, as long as they are sincere. We have already seen how unbiblical such a view is. This view is also unphilosophical, for sincerity cannot determine whether something is true. It is possible to be sincerely wrong, because faith is only as good as its object. Several years ago a nurse in a large hospital changed an oxygen tank for one of her patients. She sincerely believed that there was oxygen in the new tank she was replacing the old one with, but the next nurse to check on the patient found him dead. The tank had been wrongly labeled at the warehouse and contained nitrogen, not oxygen. This nurse sincerely believed that the tank contained oxygen, but the nitrogen still had terrible consequences for her patient.

To further illustrate that faith is only as good as its object, let's say that I put all of my trust into a potted plant to teach me calculus. Will I learn calculus from this plant? No, because it is the wrong object. In the same way, a person can not get to heaven by trusting in religion or good works, because that is trusting in the wrong object--these things cannot pay the penalty for our sin. Only Jesus can pay this penalty, and therefore He is the only legitimate object of trust for salvation.

• Reason and evidence don't apply to religion. This objection refutes the very nature of our class--the Philosophy of Religion. If reason and evidence don't apply to religion, then we should all drop this class because we are trying to do the impossible. Further, "Persons who claim that reason and evidence are irrelevant to religion must be asked why they believe this is true. If they respond by appealing to any kind of reason or evidence to support their belief, they are refuting it in the process" (Dean Halverson, The Compact Guide to World Religions, p. 245).

• It is arrogant and mean to claim that Jesus is the only way to be saved. This would be true if Christians thought of this idea on their own, were trying to teach it to others out of prideful motives, and thought it was true simply because they thought they were better than others. But this is not the case at all. Christians did not invent this claim. We are just being faithful to what Jesus Himself said. And we don't believe it is true because we think we have superior intellects or that we are better than others, but because Jesus Christ rose from the dead and proved that it was true. It is not arrogant to proclaim the truth. If I tell someone that it is wrong to believe that 2 + 2 = 8, I am not being arrogant, but honest.

• Hasn't Christian Exclusivism led to religious wars in the past? It seems that it has. But this does not mean that it is false. First, the people who encouraged these wars were acting contrary to the Bible they thought that they were defending. Mean-spirited intolerance and persecution is not the teaching of the Bible. Thus, the problem is not with this teaching, but with the sinful abuse of it by certain people who probably weren't even true Christians (see Titus 1:16). Again, the abuse of a truth does not render it false. If people went around killing in the name of love, we wouldn't conclude that love was wrong, would we?

Conclusion
Having seen the clear teaching of Scripture on Christian Exclusivism, we may conclude that the Christian church has not been misrepresenting its Bible for the last two thousand years. Having seen the reasonableness and necessity of this truth, we may conclude that the Christian belief is not irrational. Having seen the inadequacy of other religions and the fact of Christ's resurrection, we may conclude that the belief of Christian Exclusivism is true. And having defending this truth against its objections, we see that it is strong and able to stand on its own. Thus, there are very good reasons for accepting the truth of Christian Exclusivism.

(Part of article taken from:http://contendforthefaith2.com/exclus.html)