Do all religions lead to salvation?
Jesus, Himself, said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through Me.” [John 14:6]
In my Study Bible, there is a footnote that says:
The way, the truth, and the life is a Person, our Lord Jesus Christ: He is so because of His perfect union with His Father (vv, 9, 11): The way we reach the Father is forever established through the Son. Jesus is the truth because He is the unique revelation of the Father, who is the goal of our journey through life. Christ is the life, the uncreated eternal life, manifest in the flesh, so that we
might have life. Because of this, No one comes to the Father except through the Son. While aspects of goodness and truth are found among all people by virtue of their being created in the image and likeness of God, salvation comes through Christ alone.
[The Orthodox Study Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Page 251]
The scholars that wrote the cited footnote were clear and unequivocal: Salvation comes through Christ alone. This is the same theme that occurs countless other times in the New Testament and which shapes our true understanding of the Old Testament. Amen!
One can surmise that the answer to the question, “Do all religions lead to salvation?” being preached in a Christian church on the Lord Christ’s Day is NO! These words within the Holy Bible when fundamentally applied exactly as spoken by Jesus exclude the Buddhists and the Hindus and other systems of religious philosophy that are not built upon the teaching and implications of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as solely the way, the truth and the life. But I think that most people know that. Are adherents to Bahaism or Unitarian-Universalism saved through their egalitarian hope that the entire world’s major religions fall within one underlying, inclusive belief system. No, except, perhaps, by the uncertain mercy of God in His sole and absolute discretion. Mercy is the sole province of the mercy-giver, to give or to withhold as is fit and just or, in this case, as is divinely just and proper.
What about Muslims? Is their path to salvation through Mohammed or through Christ alone? Therein lays the answer! You decide. In a world of obfuscation, do we dare be silent on this issue? View CNN or Fox, to learn, first-hand, that there are many brilliant former Muslims who have converted to Christianity. This happened just a few months ago to the lovely, godly daughter-in-law of one of our parishioners. It is possible for others whom God may have placed in your path. But conversion will become very, very difficult of we conceal the message from Muslims that salvation comes through Christ alone. Is it not our obligation to make Muslims aware of this fact? Many fundamentalist Muslims would kill all Christians to make a point to other Christians to convert or perish by the Muslim sword. Should our gentle and loving words of instruction to them not be our Christian sword?
Should one ignore the straight-forward teachings of the Bible and, instead, rely upon the vague hope of God’s divine mercy? Would it not be foolish to violate a clear and unequivocal teaching of the Bible? Why would Jesus, Himself, speak those words quoted in John 14:6? The message is clear: Salvation comes through Christ alone. There is no room for an expanded or contrary position here. Like it or not, this is the rule that must govern our life. It is because Jesus Christ-true God and true man-precisely set forth this precept.
Another question arises, “Do all expressions of Christianity lead to salvation?” The answer must be denomination and believer specific. The question that each denomination, local church, priest, minister, elder or member must answer is this: Does one believe that salvation comes through Christ alone? Bishop Spong of the Episcopal Church argues to the contrary. Does Spong’s peculiar form of belief lead to salvation? I opine, “No!” His theology is all inclusive, regarding Christ as a mythical religious symbol, not the way, the truth, and the life, but one among many ways, many truths and many lives. He appears to not want any non-Christian peoples to be deprived of salvation. Hence, he is prepared to “throw out the baby with the bathwater”.
Eastern Orthodox theologians teach that salvation is not limited to Christians who subscribe to any one particularly identifiable belief system, but to those who hold basic orthodox (spelled with a small “o”) beliefs, chief among which is that salvation comes through Christ alone. This is one of the several reasons that Orthodox Christians are forbidden to proselytize other Christians. We are not to “mess around” in the lives of true Christian believers who believe the same as we do but who may worship differently or use different terminology to express the same tenets.
Note carefully that the Orthodox Christian biblical scholars of the Orthodox Study Bible, a surprising high number of who were once mainline Protestants pastors or leaders in Campus Crusade for Christ prior to becoming Orthodox Christians, are not ambiguous with their words. Their comments are basic and elemental in nature. They allow no exception or equivocation, even for the “tribes of the darkest jungle regions that have never heard the Name of Jesus.”
And those people of the tribes of dark jungles are, for us, great stressors that tell us that, at least for them, we do not want the words of Christ to be true. Here, we want Christ to equivocate, i.e., to say one thing but possibly mean something else. Some innate doctrine of fairness within those who are immature Christians wants to wish or explain away God’s precept to us that salvation comes through Christ alone. Is an innate sense of something or anything being ‘unfair’ reason to deny the explicit, fundamental instructions and teachings of Jesus Christ?
If you have a problem with the forthrightness if these words, then speak with Jesus Himself because these are His very words. If the teaching of Jesus that salvation comes through Christ alone is a stumbling block for your unquestioning belief in Jesus, solely, as the life, the way, the truth, etc., perhaps you should become a jungle missionary to search out these dark tribes so that you can bring the name of Jesus to their lips and into their hearts. Then, this seemingly important issue will be resolved for you! [Anyhow, if there are any undiscovered tribes in dark jungles, as in highly unlikely, and you or other Christians do discover that they exist, whether in the jungles of Africa, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru or wherever, and the message of Christ-Crucified and Resurrected-does not reach all of them, hope that God is truly merciful and is willing to ignore His own precepts. If your social conscience needs an exception, dare you instead ignore a straight-forward teaching and, instead, rely on God’s mercy.] God does have a plan and it is a wonderful plan for each and every one of us who believe and act that we truly believe in all aspects of our lives and relationships. Just because we do not precisely know what His plan is does not excuse us from believing and living according to the precepts He has given us.
Our duty is to believe and then to teach others to believe through our words and example, not to carve out exceptions which are in no way logically implied or can be inferred from other words or teachings of Jesus or St. Paul or St. Peter or other New Testament writers. We are not discussing a saying of Jesus that we know is an obvious and intended overstatement, like “if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out…” Good sense tells us that Jesus was dramatically making an important point, not advocating a society of blind and lame persons, for all of us are sinners. Only Jesus is a man without sin. He, also, is God incarnate.
Worry not about imaginary people in pretend dark jungles. Let others who are better equipped evangelize them. Reach out, instead to the people of the asphalt jungles and in the forests, streets and lanes of the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and elsewhere who “hear”, but “who do not believe.” You can teach Christ to them much easier than teaching Him to unknown natives in unknown regions of a vast world.
Are Orthodox Christians alone in these beliefs? No! Importantly, this short footnote quoted earlier also reflects, foursquare, the teachings of important Protestant biblical scholars of varying denominations. Read from the works of Charles Stanley, Lee Strobel, Dr. D. James Kennedy and other important Protestant evangelists to ascertain absolute unanimity on this point. There is no equivocation by these Christians. Read in particular the writings of Fr. Patrick Reardon (a former Trappist monk-priest, a former Anglican priest-seminary professor and now an Orthodox parish priest and Christian author) and his associate Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, and Roman Catholic writers at the scholarly, conservative Touchstone magazine. We all need to be Christians in the Touchstone tradition. Read the magazine and you will see why this is so.
Salvation through Jesus the Christ is not a doctrine that should be subjected to liberal interpretation. To lessen its negative impact upon the social sensitivity or conscience of an equalitarian, democratic populace is to thwart its message and irresponsibly expose some to the danger of eventual damnation. It is the truth, just as Jesus is the truth.
We should ask this question: What about our friends and loved ones who believe that salvation can come other than through Christ or, worse yet, who have no concern with salvation? What is the fate of our own flesh-and-blood sons and daughters who have left “the faith” entirely? I am not speaking about those leaving the Orthodox Christian faith, but of those who leave the orthodox (small “o”) Christian faith. What is their fate?
I’ll answer that question by asking another question. Can one avert a hurricane by denying that one will come?
Several of our parishioners near the Punta Gorda area of Charlotte County, FL were severely victimized by Hurricane Charley. One of our families closed on the purchase of their new home on Wednesday, moved in on Thursday and returned from a storm shelter on Friday to find that part of their home was gone. Could they have wished that the situation were otherwise and failed to protect their lives by denying that the hurricane would come or that it could gravely affect them personally? They certainly could have wished as they saw fit, but their wishes would not have prevented the personal disaster that ultimately and tragically affected their lives. They did what was right. They fled to a safe refuge during their hurricane.
Can you see the parallel between this natural disaster and a salvific disaster that one could encounter if one believes that salvation through Christ is just one among several options? When I use the term ‘believe’, I am not speaking about some mere intellectual assent to an abstract principle that has little effect upon one’s life. For example, unless you are a black man, woman or child, you might believe that racial profiling us bad, but of what practical import is that to you? A believer, on the other hand, might try to do something to end racial profiling, even if it is only to make powerful persons more intellectually and emotionally informed about the horrors and humiliations that innocent blacks suffer when subjected to racial profiling. I am talking about a way of life that is affected by such beliefs.
Like Abraham Lincoln’s crusade to end slavery. That was the focus of his life, day-in and day-out until his mission was accomplished. Now I know little about the religious beliefs of Abraham Lincoln, but I know that I respect what he did and I want him to be in heaven and I want to go to heaven and meet, among others, Mr. Lincoln. Will that happen? It depends on whether Mr. Lincoln and I both believed-and acted in full furtherance of that belief-that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life.
Consider, again, the hurricane situation. Are there any circumstances in which the Christian mother and father could have justifiably ignored the expert predictions of hurricane-savvy meteorologists and not have taken refuge in the shelter of the hurricane safety center? What if an adult child had insisted upon staying home, refusing to go to the shelter? Should the Mom and Dad have agreed to the possibility of perishing with the family intact, including both the minor children and the adult children, merely for the sake of family unity in adversity? Or, should the parents have fled, taking their younger children to a shelter? What about a situation involving a son or daughter, just one day shy or one day past of his/her 18th birthday, the age of legal competence in Florida? What is the moral dilemma of the parents if their son or daughter refuses to accompany them to the shelter? Do the parents go there or stay home?
What about a salvific dilemma? If one’s older child refuses to seek the shelter of Christ at church, does his/her mom and dad stay home (the ‘here’ in my examples) with the son or daughter and the other, younger children? Do they go there or stay here?
Should a thoroughly Christian mother and father fail to tell of dangers to their children of not taking shelter in Christ? Would the answer be different if the children were grown adults? Is the spiritual safety and training of adult children of less importance than the safety and wellbeing of young children?
If our adult children failed to follow our lead, our actions, our persuasiveness, our admonitions and warnings about taking safe refuge, is it somehow our fault if they perish as a direct result of a storm, no matter how strongly they denied that it would come or that it would adversely affect their wellbeing? We would hurt tragically for the remainder of our lives, but would they not be responsible, ultimately, for their own fate in succumbing to a hurricane? Is this not the same for those ‘children’ who deny in their actions and in their hearts that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life? Are we ever excused from parental teaching and persuasive responsibilities, even up-to-the-last-moment of our respective lives?
Who are our children? Who are God’s children?
We cannot shut our eyes to the plight of children, whoever they might be and with no regard for their age! Age is not necessarily an indicator of maturity and wisdom, especially spiritual maturity and spiritual wisdom. Just as we would preach the dangers of responding properly to hurricane warnings having been victimized ourselves by a hurricane, we must direct our lives to effectively teaching our children and God’s other children to prepare for salvific hurricanes in life. Yet, when the last moment for us and for our children clearly dictates that we must seek shelter, we must do it, being prayerfully hopeful that our non-refuge seeking children might somehow be saved through fluke or providence or whatever. At that point, hope is all that is available to them and to us.
How do we remedy a situation that we have somehow allowed to happen by our failure to effectively exercise our parental authority previously? What if disobedience to one’s parents is a long established pattern of behavior? Should we just keep our “mouths shut” because they “need” to lives their “own” lives and make their “own” decisions?
No.
If your son of any age was stooping down to pick up a tiny little snake that he felt was obviously harmless because of its small size, and if you recognized it to be a pigmy rattler, would you not dramatically intervene and do all that was necessary for him to avoid the dangerous poisons that can kill?
Go back one more time to the example of the Punta Gorda family. Should one of the parents have left the shelter, perhaps even during the most perilous parts of the storm, to make another attempt to persuade an erring child to take shelter? Is it right and proper to act with reckless abandon, knowing that the very young children in the family can be orphaned by wrongly choosing one option over another? This is a tough question to answer because of the extra factor of unselfish love of a parent for a child. Many a parent would, indeed, venture into a storm to ply away an errant thinking child and escort that child to shelter. Isn’t this somehow what Jesus did in submitting Himself as a sacrifice for our sins? The practical and foresighted solution is to never allow for last minute decisions to occur!
To save a parent from ever encountering such a dilemma, it might be necessary for the parent to establish the ground rules for shelter seeking early on. Failing same, the parent has other God given weapons in his or her arsenal. Persuasion via an appeal of reciprocal love between parent and child, an appeal to reason, or the making of material promises for the future are just some of these weapons. Look at the icon of Michael the Archangel that is before us. Is the sword in his hand not actually a weapon of righteous love that can wield great power?
The key to ‘hurricane’ survival is an early on approach to solving a potential problem. It might take some time to perfect the lessons, but one’s life and the lives of those whom God has entrusted into one’s care will depend upon it because someday, somewhere, a ‘hurricane’ happens in every one’s life. We can never shut our eyes to these needs for guidance and training of children, whether they are our flesh-and-blood children or God’s other children, whether they are young children or older children. One of our 92 year olds in my former parish has a 70 year old ‘child’ and the father refers to him as such and thinks of him as such…and cares for him as such. The father’s love and guidance is always present.
There is no time for sentimental love that is expressed by wishing away and denying damnation for those who believe other than in Jesus as the way, the truth and the life. There are no grounds-other than wishful thinking-for denying that much is expected by the Creator of those whom He lovingly created. There is time only for action because life is short and the responsibilities are awesome. There is no universal salvation for all men like some say. There are no salvific opportunities for people to choose Mormonism or become Jehovah’s Witnesses because their views of Christ are perverted. Remember that all religions do not lead to salvation, even those that mimic Christianity. Christianity is the badge that is to be worn on breastplates only by true believers who deny selves, take up their cross, and follow the Christ.
Meditate upon Christ as the sole way, the sole truth and the sole life. Teach that meditation in an effective manner to all whom God places in your path. You know that God has given you unique gifts and you know that you have been successful in the past when diligently applying these gifts.
If you are not compelled by the doctrine of Christ as the way, the truth and the life, ask yourself what the opposite is. The confusing maze, the great lie, the eternal death! This is a description of HELL. Can you accept that your loved ones who do not see Jesus as the way will perish forever in the horrors of HELL far away from you who are a believer? This, alone, should be sufficient motive to propel you to evangelize as if the life of someone you love depends upon it. It does!
You know in your heart of hearts what you must do and you know that the Holy Spirit will guide you in doing correctly and effectively that which you must do. Do it and do not be impatient for immediate results for it is the final result that tells all.
Fr. Basil Banyasz, JD, PhD(c)
Holy Spirit Orthodox Church
Venice, FL
Abouna1943@aol.com
