#inclusivism

[thepersonalquotes]

One may be "outside" the church, but one can never be "outside" of God's love.

Clark H. Pinnock, A Wideness in God's Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

Hey so I've been wondering about inclusivsm vs exclusivism in Christianity and the Bible. I've had more of a inclusivst view before, but I find that there's also a large amount of exclusivism in the Bible. So, I was wondering what you think about it overall? Is it both? Neither? Nothing? One? Anyway, may the Lord be with you always 💛💐

Hi there! I am 100% against exclusivism, and lean towards religious pluralism. For me that means I don't believe that only Christians go to heaven, that Christianity is the only "right" belief system / that Jesus is the only path to the Divine, or that Christians are God's Extra Special Favorites.

When we pray Thy will be done, we look forward to God's will succeeding — and what God wills is abundant life for everyone! Not just for the Right Kind of Christians; not just for all Christians in general; not even just for all human beings; but for all Creation.

There are numberless ways to worship the Divine, to express faith, to glorify our Creator. Wherever there is life, there is Spirit. Wherever there are beings seeking to bring life, Divinity is glorified.

The diversity of faiths is a holy gift that we too often twist into a flaw to be corrected. God shaped humans to need one another — alone, our perspectives and gifts are limited; only together can we hope to come close to understanding the Divine. We have so much to learn from one another — if only let go of our smugness, our sense of superiority, our need to be the ones with All The Answers. If only we let go of the fear we've been taught — fear that we'll go to hell if we're wrong; fear that others will go to hell if they're wrong.

Sorry for waxing poetic lol. Here's a post where I explore inclusivism vs. exclusivism in more depth, including looks at various Bible passages.

Other related things:

Here's a really old post/video that gathers some of my thoughts on inclusivism, salvation, heaven.

Here's a more recent post where I talk about why I don't believe in hell.

My evangelism tag (tl;dr: I'm staunchly against prosletyzing to anyone who doesn't explicitly request more info about Christianity)

I highly recommend the book Holy Envy by Barbara Brown Taylor for a Christian framework for forming respectful, mutual relationships with people of other faiths. This tag has some excerpts from the book.

[sofiaflorina2021]

Happy Human Rights Day 2024

Happy Human Rights Day, 10 December, 2024. 2024 Theme: "Our Rights, Our Future, Right Now." This theme has a message that the fulfillment of human rights is an urgent matter because it is the basis of an peaceful, just and inclusive society.

By defending human rights, we can prevent harm before it happens. By protecting human rights, we protect our future. By advancing human rights, we create a fairer world. We can do all this together for our common good. I personally also do all this as best I can.

[a-queer-seminarian]

“Once my holy envy led me to ask more of my tradition than the narrative of exclusive salvation and everlasting triumph, I began to search for counternnarratives that sounded more like Jesus to me. In particular, I looked for stories that supported Christian engagement with religious strangers — not as potential converts but as agents of the God who transcends religion and never met a stranger.

Beginning with the Persian magi in Matthew’s Gospel and ending with the Roman centurion who recognizes Jesus as the Son of God, the Gospels are full of such characters — people who come from beyond the tribe to bless the tribe and then return to where they came from.

In Judaism they are called ‘righteous gentiles.’ I do not know what they are called in Christianity, but Jesus receives them more than once, whether they come from Samaria, Syrophoenicia, Canaan, or Rome. In story after story, they enter stage left, deliver their blessing on the Christian gospel, and exit stage right, leaving their mark on a tradition that is not their own.

If it is easy for Christians to overlook the ‘otherness’ of these religious strangers, then I think that is because we assume that once they enter our story they never leave it. In gratitude for their blessing, we baptize them as anonymous Christians. We make them one of us. A few do join us, but this is not the norm.

In the case of the Persian magi, their appearance in Bethlehem is as surprising as a delegation of Methodist bishops arriving in Dharamsala to recognize the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama. Once they deliver their gifts to the starlit Hebrew baby, they go back to where they came from, presumably to resume their vocations as Zoroastrian priests. Yet every Christmas we sing of them in church, as if they had never left.

This tradition of strangers bearing divine gifts begins early in the Bible with the story of Melchizedek, a Canaanite king and priest who comes out of nowhere bearing bread and wine for Abraham (then Abram) after a great battle. You can find it in Genesis 14 if you want, but since it is only four verses long you are also welcome to my summary.

First Melchizedek blesses Abram in the name of God Most High, whom he serves. At no point is there any discussion about whether Melchizedek’s God and Abram’s God are the same God. After blessing Abram, Melchizedek blesses God. In gratitude, Abram gives him a tenth of everything. Then Melchizedek exits the story as suddenly as he entered it, leaving Abram to become Abraham, the father of the Jews. The End.

Though Jews and Christians have made much of this mysterious stranger, some going as far as offering up elaborate interpretations of Melchizedek’s identity in order to establish their own priority, the story needs no embellishment. As short as it is, the narrative already has a clear message in place: God works through religious strangers. For reasons that will never be entirely clear, God sometimes sends people from outside a faith community to bless those inside of it. It does not seem to matter if the main characters understand God in the same way or call God by the same name. The divine blessing is effective, and the story goes on.

Other examples of redemptive religious strangers in the first testament of the Bible include Bithiah, the Pharaoh’s daughter who plucked baby Moses from his rush basket in the River Nile and raised him as her own; Jethro, the Midianite priest who was Moses’s father-in-law and teacher; Ruth, the Moabite who became the ancestor of King David; and Cyrus, the Persian king who ended the Babylonian exile and allowed the Jews to return home — the only non-Jew in the Bible who is ever identified as God’s anointed one.

...

The remarkable thing about the stranger-loving commands in the Bible is that they appear in the sacred scriptures of Jews and Christians, which are honored by Muslims as well. By all rights, you would expect such scriptures to protect a religious community’s privileges and diminish the rights of those who do not belong to it, but that is not the case. Instead, these communities have chosen to preserve commands that clarify God’s care for outsiders as well as insiders, religious strangers as well as friends.”

- Barbara Brown Taylor in Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

(I’m popping a extra disclaimer here because I don’t know if I worded this very well, and I understand if this isnt the kind if question you feel comfortable answering, but this is a genuine question made in good faith. I also apologise if this sounds really stupid)

I read one of your recent asks about inclusivism and it reminded me of something that always sat in the back of my mind with this train of thought.

If we say that everyone regardless of religion, or absence of it, gets into heaven, doesn’t that seem disrespectful to their faith. By saying that people of other religions get into christian heaven, is that not inadvertently telling them that their religion or their gods are fake, and that when they die it’ll be okay because they’ll learn the real truth? I hope this doesn’t come across as blunt or disrespectful to anyone, I’ve just never be able to come to a conclusion that isn’t exclusive (which is kind of a depressing thought), but is also respectful. Because it’s a beautiful idea that god loves us all regardless of who we are or what we believe, but what about people who have the kind of faith we do in a completely different god, or multiple gods, do they have the same thoughts about us? that their god loves us even though we dont believe?

I feel like I’m asking questions I’m not supposed to but I’m just really curious about your perspective if this is something you’re comfortable answering.

Hey anon, this is an important question, so thanks for asking it! You don't sound "stupid"; you're thinking like a theologian :) I'm probably not going to do it justice, I'm afraid, but maybe folks will hop on with more ideas or resources?

This got really long, so the TL;DR: I agree with you, and so do a lot of theologians and other thinkers!

In a religiously diverse world, it makes sense that people of various religions ponder where people outside their religions "fit" in their understanding of both the present world and whatever form of afterlife they have.

If someone has a firm personal belief in certain things taking place after death (from heaven to reincarnation), I don't think it's inherently wrong to imagine all kinds of people joining them in that experience, when it points to how that person recognizes the inherent holiness and value of all kinds of people, and shows that they long for continued community with & flourishing for those people.

However, this contemplation should be done with great care — especially when your religion is the dominant one in your culture; especially if your religion has a long history (and/or present) of colonialism and coerced conversions.

Ultimately, humility and openness are key! It's fine to have your own beliefs about humanity's place in this life and after death, but make yourself mindful of your own limited perspective. Accept you might be wrong in part or in whole! And be open to learning from others' ideas, and truly listening to them if they say something in your ideas has caused them or their community tangible harm.

In the rest of this post, I'll focus on a Christian perspective and keep grappling with how to consider these questions while honoring both one's personal faith and people all religions...without coming to any solid conclusions (sorry, but I don't think there's any one-size-fits-all or fully satisfying answer!).

I'll talk a bit about inclusivism and how it fails pretty miserably in this regard, and point towards religious pluralism as a possibly better (tho still imperfect) option.

And as usual I'll say I highly recommend Barbara Brown Taylor's book Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others to any Christians / cultural Christians who want to learn more about entering into mutual relationship with people of other religions.

In previous posts, I brought up the concepts of exclusivism, inclusivism, and religious pluralism without digging into their academic definitions and histories — partially because it's A Lot for a tumblr post, but also because it's by no means in my sphere of expertise. I worried about misrepresenting any viewpoint if I tried to get all academic, so I just stuck to my own personal opinions instead — but looking back at some posts, I see I didn't do a great job of clarifying that's what I was doing!

So now I'll go into what scholars mean when talking about these different viewpoints, with a huge caveat that I'm not an expert; I'm just drawing from notes and foggy memories from old seminary classes + this article from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), and anyone interested in learning more should find scholarly articles or books rather than relying on some guy on tumblr!

Defining exclusivism, inclusivism, & religious pluralism

When we encounter traditions that offer differing and often conflicting "accounts of the nature of both mundane and supramundane reality, of the ultimate ends of human beings, and of the ways to achieve those ends" (IEP), how do we respond? Do we focus on difference and reject any truth in their views that conflicts with our views? Do we avoid looking too closely at the places we differ? try to find common ground? try to make their views fit ours?

Exclusivism, inclusivism, and religious pluralism are three categories into which we can place various responses to the reality of religious diversity.

It's important to note that this is only one categorization system one can use, and that these categories were developed within a Western, Christian context (by a guy named Alan Race in 1983). They are meant to be usable by persons of any religion — all sorts of people ask these questions about how their beliefs relate to others' beliefs — but largely do skew towards a Western, Christian way of understanding religion. (For one thing, there's a strong focus on salvation / afterlife and not all religions emphasize that stuff very much, if at all!)

Drawing primarily from this article on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), here are basic definitions of each:

Exclusivist positions maintain that "only one set of belief claims or practices can ultimately be true or correct (in most cases, those of the one holding the position). A Christian exclusivist would therefore hold that the beliefs of non-Christians (and perhaps even Christians of other denominations) are in some way flawed, if not wholly false..." . (From my old class notes — Exclusivist Christians believe 3 things are non-negotiable: the unique authority of Jesus Christ as the apex of revelation; Jesus as normative; salvation exclusively through repentance and faith in Christ's work on the cross. Some will allow that God does provide some truths about Godself and humanity through general revelation, including truths found in other religious traditions, but the Biggest most Important revelation is still Jesus.) .

Inclusivist positions "recognize the possibility that more than one religious tradition can contain elements that are true or efficacious, while at the same time hold that only one tradition expresses ultimate religious truth most completely." . Christian inclusivists tend to focus on salvation, claiming that non-Christians can still achieve salvation — still through Jesus Christ. Sometimes they hold that any non-Christian whose life happens to fit Jesus's call to love God and neighbor, etc., will be saved. Other times they hold that only non-Christians who never had the chance to learn about Jesus can be saved; if you know about Christianity and reject it, it doesn't matter how "good"you are, you're doomed. .

Pluralist positions hold that "more than one set of beliefs or practices can be, at least partially and perhaps wholly, true or correct simultaneously." For Christian pluralists, that means believing that Jesus is not the one Way to God / to heaven/salvation; Christianity is one way of many, usually conceived of as all being on equal footing, to connect to the Divine. .

(These three categories are not all encompassing; the IEP article also brings up relativism and skepticism.)

Issues with Exclusivism & Inclusivism

I hope the issues with exclusivism are clear, but to name a few:

Christians who are taught that all non-Christians (or even the "wrong kind" of Christians) are doomed to hell are taught to see those people as Projects more than people — there's a perceived urgent need to convert them asap in order to "save them." The only kind of relationship you'd form with one of them is centered in efforts to convert them, rather than to live and learn alongside them as they are.

Doesn't matter if they are already happily committed to a different religion. In your eyes, they're wrong about feeling fulfilled and connected to the Divine.

Doesn't matter if you have to resort to violent and coercive practices like wiping out all signs of non-Christian culture or kidnapping non-Christian children to raise Christian — the ends justify the means because you're looking out for their "immortal souls."

...But what about inclusivism? If you're a Christian inclusivist, you aren't forcing anyone to convert to Christianity right now! You acknowledge that non-Christians can live holy and fulfilling lives! You even acknowledge that there's scraps of value in their valid-but-not-as-valid-as-Christianity religions! So what's the problem?

Turns out that this is a major case of one's good intentions not being nearly as important as one's impact.

You may be pushing back against exclusivism's outright refusal that non-Christians have any connection to the divine at all, which is nice and all — but by saying that non-Christians will basically become Christian after they die, you are still perpetuating our long history of coercive conversions.

There's a reason some scholars argue that inclusivism isn't actually a separate category from, but a sub-category of, exclusivism: you're still saying everyone has to be Christian, "so luckily you'll See The Light and become Christian after you die :)"

This is very reasonably offensive to many non-Christians. If nothing else, it's ludicrously smug and paternalistic! I won't get into it here but it only gets worse when some inclusivist positions try to get all Darwinian and start arranging religions from lower to higher, with Christianity as the "evolutionary" apex of religion ://

For now, I'll only go into detail about Catholic Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner's particular version of inclusivism, because it's quite common and really highlights the paternalism:

Rahner's Anonymous Christians:

A question that Catholics and other Christians struggled with in the 20th century was this: If non-Christians cannot be saved (because they held firm in believing that salvation must be in and through Christ), what happens if someone never even had the chance to learn about Christianity? Surely a loving God wouldn't write them an automatic ticket to hell when they're non-Christian through no fault of their own, right?

German Jesuit Karl Rahner's response was to conceive of a sort of abstract version of Christianity for non-Christians who lived good, faithful lives outside of official (what he called "constituted") Christianity:

"Anonymous Christianity means that a person lives in the grace of God and attains salvation outside of explicitly constituted Christianity. ...Let us say, a Buddhist monk…who, because he follows his conscience, attains salvation and lives in the grace of God; of him I must say that he is an anonymous Christian; if not, I would have to presuppose that there is a genuine path to salvation that really attains that goal, but that simply has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. But I cannot do that. And so, if I hold if everyone depends upon Jesus Christ for salvation, and if at the same time I hold that many live in the world who have not expressly recognized Jesus Christ, then there remains in my opinion nothing else but to take up this postulate of an anonymous Christianity." - Karl Rahner in Dialogue (1986), p. 135.

So someone who has intentionally devoted themselves to another religion, someone who does good work in that religion's name, is...secretly, unbeknownst to them, actually Christian?

I hope the offensiveness of that is clear — the condescension in implying these people are ignorant of what religion they "really" belong to! the assumption that Good deeds & virtues are always inherently Christian deeds & virtues! the arrogance of being so sure your own religion is The One Right Way that you have to construct a "back door" (as Hans Küng describes it) into it to shove in all these poor people who for whatever reason can't or don't choose to join it!

One theologian who criticized the paternalism of "anonymous Christianity" is John Hick, who was one of the big advocates for religious pluralism as a more respectful way of understanding non-Christian religions. So let's finally talk some more about pluralism!

Religious Pluralism!

As defined earlier, religious pluralist positions hold that there are many paths to the divine, and that all religions have access to some truths about the divine.

For Christians, this means rejecting those 3 non-negotiables of exclusionists about Christianity being the one true religion and Jesus being the one path to salvation. Instead of claiming that Christianity is the "most advanced" religion, pluralism claims that Christianity is just one religion among many, with no unique claim on the truth.

Some other pluralist points:

Pluralism resists antisemitic claims that Christianity is the "fulfillment" of (or that it "supercedes") Judaism.

Various religions provide independent access to salvation rather than everyone's salvation relying on Christ. (Note the still very Christian-skewed lens here in emphasizing salvation at all though!)

When we notice how different religions' truth claims conflict with one another, pluralists reconcile this by talking about how one's experience of truth is subjective.

Pluralism tends to give more authority to human experience than sacred texts

John Hicks' pluralist position

I mentioned before that Hicks is one of the big names in the religious pluralism scene. The IEP article I drew from earlier goes into much greater detail about his views and responses to it in the section titled "c. John Hick: the Pluralistic Hypothesis," but for a brief overview:

His central claim is that "diverse religious traditions have emerged as various finite, historical responses to a single transcendent, ultimate, divine reality. The diversity of traditions (and the belief claims they contain) is a product of the diversity of religious experiences among individuals and groups throughout history, and the various interpretations given to these experiences."

"As for the content of particular belief claims, Hick understands the personal deities of those traditions that posit them...as personae of the Real, explicitly invoking the connotation of a theatrical mask in the Latin word persona."

"Hick claims that all religious understandings of the Real are on equal footing insofar as they can only offer limited, phenomenal representations of transcendent truth."

We must accept that world religions are fundamentally different from each other, rather than falling into platitudes about how "we're all the same deep down"

Each religion has its own particular and comprehensive framework for understanding the world and human experience (i.e. we shouldn't use the normative Christian framework to describe other faiths)

Another angle: hospitality

As various philosophers and theologians have responded to and expanded upon pluralist frameworks, one big concept that some emphasize is hospitality: that all of us regardless of religion have an obligation to welcome others to all that is ours, if and when they have need of it — especially when they are of different cultures or religions from us.

Hospitality requires respect for those under our care, honoring and protecting their differences.

When we are the ones in need of hospitality, we should be able to expect the same.

Hospitality implies being able to anticipate our guest's needs, but we need to accept the impossibility of being able to guess every need, so communication is key!

Liberation theology & Pluralism

I also appreciate what liberation theologians have brought into the discussion. Here's from the IEP article:

"Liberation theology, which advocates a religious duty to aid those who are poor or suffering other forms of inequality and oppression, has had a significant influence on recent discussions of pluralism. The struggle against oppression can be seen as providing an enterprise in which members of diverse religious traditions can come together in solidarity.

"Paul F. Knitter, whose work serves as a prominent theological synthesis of liberation and pluralist perspectives, argues that engaging in interreligious dialogue is part and parcel of the ethical responsibility at the heart of liberation theology. He maintains not only that any liberation theology ought to be pluralistic, but also that any adequate theory of religious pluralism ought to include an ethical dimension oriented toward the goal of resisting injustice and oppression.

"Knitter claims that, if members of diverse religions are interested (as they should be) in encountering each other in dialogue and resolving their conflicts, this can only be done on the basis of some common ground. ..."

Knitter sees suffering as that common ground: "Suffering provides a common cause with which diverse religious traditions are concerned and towards which they can come together to craft a common agenda. Particular instances of suffering will, of course, differ from each other in their causes and effects; likewise, the practical details of work to alleviate suffering will almost necessarily be fleshed out differently by different religions, at different times and in different places. Nevertheless, Knitter maintains that suffering itself is a cross-cultural and universal phenomenon and should thus serve as the reference point for a practical religious pluralism. Confronting suffering will naturally give rise to solidarity, and pluralist respect and understanding can emerge from there."

Knitter also sees the planet as a source of literal common ground for us all: "Earth not only serves as a common physical location for all religious traditions, but it also provides these traditions with what Knitter calls a 'common cosmological story' (1995, p. 119). ...Knitter makes a case that different religious traditions share an ecological responsibility and that awareness of this shared responsibility, as it continues to emerge, can also serve as a basis for mutual understanding."

When Knitter and other liberation theologians speak of suffering or earth care as rallying points for interreligious solidarity, it's important to point out that such solidarity doesn't happen automatically: it is something we have to choose to commit to. We have to be courageous about challenging those who would pin suffering on another religious or cultural group. We have to be courageous about having difficult conversations, again and again. We have to learn how to work together for common goals even while accepting where we differ.

How to end this long ass post?

My hope is that as you read (or skimmed) all this, you were thinking about your own personal beliefs: where, if anywhere, do they fit among all these ideas? where would you like them to fit?

And, in the end, did I really address anon's question about whether it's disrespectful to people of other religions to assert that everyone is loved by God, or gets into heaven? Not really, because I don't know. I think it probably depends on context, and how one puts it, and how certain one acts about their ideas about God and heaven.

For me, it always comes down to humility about my own limited perspective, even while asserting that we all have a right to our personal beliefs, including ideas about what comes after this life.

When I imagine all human beings together in whatever comes next, I hope I do so not out of a desire for assimilation into my religion, but a desire to continue to learn from and alongside all kinds of people and beliefs. I hope I remain open to learning about how other people envision both what comes after death, and more importantly, what they think about life here and now. What can I learn from them about truth, kindness, justice? How can we work together to achieve those things for all creation, despite and in and through our differences?

I'll end with Eboo Patel's description of religious pluralism, which sums up much of how I feel, from his memoir Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim:

"Religious pluralism is neither mere coexistence nor forced consensus. It is a form of proactive cooperation that affirms the identities of the constituent communities while emphasizing that the wellbeing of each and all depends on the health of the whole. It is the belief that the common good is best served when each community has a chance to make its unique contribution."

___

Further resources:

Explore my #religious pluralism tag for more thoughts and quotes

You might also enjoy wandering through my #interfaith tag

Two podcast episodes that draw from Eboo Patel, Barbara Brown Taylor, and other wonderful people: "No One Owns God: Readying yourself for respectful interfaith encounters" and "It's good to have wings, but you have to have roots too: Cultivating your own faith while embracing religious pluralism"

My tag with excerpts from Holy Envy

Post that includes links to various questions about heaven

Here’s a post where I talk about why I don’t believe in hell

My evangelism tag (tl;dr: I’m staunchly against prosletyzing to anyone who doesn’t explicitly request more info about Christianity)

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

I saw a post by you just a bit ago (that i already rb'd because it's great), but in it you mentioned that Jesus never told us to go out and convert people to Christianity. that's completely right as far as i can tell, since the word "christian" didn't even exist until about halfway through the book of acts. but i do wonder about the line "none can come to the Father except through me" that Jesus said at one point (can't remember exact details). i'm curious about your opinions on that in regards to beliefs? obviously evangelism has gone WAY off course from its intended purpose, but wasn't the whole point of Jesus coming so that people would believe and be saved? or is that entirely just indoctrination that i've missed over the years?

Hey hi, sorry for the delay! Great question!

If Jesus is “the Way,” can Christians embrace an inclusivist vision of salvation?

[Edit/update to this post: I accidentally glomped two distinct viewpoints together here — I use the term inclusivist while talking about something that's more in the vein of religious pluralism. Sorry!]

Anyone wondering about the post therealandian is referencing, you can see it here. 

Summary of that post: Jesus did not command us to convert everyone to “a new religion called Christianity”; rather, “Jesus called us to go into the world and proclaim good news - news of liberating love for everyone - and to make disciples, or in other words, invite people to follow in the example of Jesus. To emulate the life Jesus lived and work to create the world he dreamed of. And did you know that you can do that without ever making someone a Christian?”

But, as you rightly note in your ask, there certainly are passages in the Greek Bible (New Testament) that take or seem to take a more exclusivist angle. The words attributed to Jesus in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth, and the light; no one comes to the Father except through me,” is a huge one! 

So this post will address that verse, and then explore the concept of being “saved.”

________

[Side Note about how complicated things can get when exploring the Bible through a critical lens....skip over this little section if you don’t want unnecessary complications lol]

So. I could add a ton of complexity to this conversation by bringing up, like, biblical “meta”....

about how for the author of John’s Gospel, a big goal was to evangelize — to convince people that the up-and-coming (and at that time small and persecuted) religion centered around Jesus was worth converting to — and thus John’s Jesus makes a lot of statements about being The One Way.....

and we can ask the question of whether Jesus “really” said everything any Gospel writer attributed to him, or whether they made up or altered some of it.....

but dang, that’ll get really complicated!! (If anyone wants to hear more about that hot mess, i’ll dig out some of my seminary notes...)

But for this post, I’ll just take the Gospels at their word — I’ll respond with the assumption that Jesus did “actually say” everything John’s Gospel says he said. Because even if he did, we can still see radical inclusivism at work in Jesus’s words and ministry — especially when we don’t look only at any singular quote from him, but take in everything he’s quoted as saying in John as a whole. 

___________

The Gospels: For every exclusivist passage, there is an inclusivist counter-narrative

When we only look at one Bible verse at a time, it’s easy to find one to support just about any perspective on anything. Dig up one verse and you can claim “The Bible definitively says all people all go to heaven”; dig up another, and you can claim “The Bible definitively says only Christians go to heaven” (or even that only Christians of one specific denomination go to heaven....).

This is why it’s important to take a broader view when studying scripture. I write about my own general framework for interpreting scripture here, if you’re interested — in includes understanding that the Bible is a large collection of texts written by a whole bunch of different people.

It gets extra wild within the Gospel of John, where one book holds such counter-narratives within itself! So let’s bring in an expert: Barbara Brown Taylor, with her book Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others. 

(By the way, there’s an episode of my podcast where I read from that book extensively. You might enjoy the whole episode, as it’s a discussion on how to ready yourself for respectful interfaith conversations.)

Taylor talks about how there’s a lot of triumphalism in the Bible — an attitude of superiority regarding one’s own beliefs or gods. But Taylor shows how for every triumphalist text in the Bible, you can also find a text that embraces religious pluralism — just as for any misogynistic text you can find a text that empowers women, etc. There are counter-narratives to every narrative; God’s liberation and welcome shine through the xenophobia and bias of scripture’s very human authors:

“...When I run into a hard corner of Christian thinking about the subordination of women, I remember that the angel Gabriel did not ask Mary’s father if it would be all right for her to bear a son out of wedlock; Gabriel asked her. When I am walloped by Christian condescension toward those who are not Christian, I remember how many religious strangers played lead roles in Jesus’s life: the Canaanite woman who expanded his sense of agency, the Samaritan leper who showed him what true gratitude looked like, the Roman centurion in whom he saw more faith than he had ever seen in one of his own tribe. ...”

(You can read the wider passage surrounding the above quote here.)

What counter-narratives are there for John 14:6?

Here’s what Taylor says in Holy Envy about John 14:6 in particular:

“Most of us prefer [the scripture passages] that grant us special privilege. For Christians, the most potent one is John 14:6, in which Jesus says, ‘No one comes to the Father except through me.’ Here is the bedrock assurance that Christians alone have access to God. But why is this verse more important than one that comes two chapters earlier in John’s Gospel? ‘Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me,’ Jesus says in John 12:44. Maybe my hearing is off, but those two verses sound different to me. So why do so many Christians know the former saying but not the latter one? Could it be that our favorite verses are the ones that make us feel most right?

‘I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.’ That is something else Jesus says in John’s Gospel [in John chapter 10]. He does not elaborate, but I like imagining the God of many sheep, many folds, many favorites, many mansions. This is how far my holy envy has brought me: from fearing that Jesus will be mad at me for smelling other people’s roses to trusting that Jesus is the Way that embraces all ways. Because there is only one of me, I can only walk one way at a time, but that does not prevent me from believing that other people might be walking their ways with equal devotion and good will.”

Another couple passages of John that I enjoy as a balance to the narrower sounding “I am the Way”:

 Jesus’s comment that the wind (or Spirit) “blows where it wills” (John 3:8) – God, the Holy Spirit, Truth, are not owned by us. God is free, and reveals Themself where we might never expect – even in “non-believers,” because we do not need to seek and find God – God seeks and finds us.

“And I, when I am lifted from the earth, will draw all to myself” (John 12:32)

Finally, when we move beyond any single verse of John to the Bible as a whole, we find story after story countering the idea that one must be a Christian (or belong to any specific religion or group) to be saved, or loved by God, or good, or any such thing.

Barbara Brown Taylor points out many of these biblical counter-narratives to the idea of exclusivism:

“Once my holy envy led me to ask more of my tradition than the narrative of exclusive salvation and everlasting triumph, I began to search for counternarratives that sounded more like Jesus to me. In particular, I looked for stories that supported Christian engagement with religious strangers — not as potential converts but as agents of the God who transcends religion and never met a stranger.

Beginning with the Persian magi in Matthew’s Gospel and ending with the Roman centurion who recognizes Jesus as the Son of God, the Gospels are full of such characters — people who come from beyond the tribe to bless the tribe and then return to where they came from. ...”

See this post for the full passage of her book that explores the stories of a huge number of these “religious strangers,” from Melchizedek to Ruth to the Syrophoenician woman.

To Taylor, these tales are far more surprising to find in the Bible than the various verses that make triumphalist or exclusivist claims. It’s not surprising to hear John’s author claim that only through Jesus can one come to the Father, an apologetic argument for why people should convert to Christianity. What is surprising and therefore a beautiful testament to the Divine working through the human in scripture is that there are also those counter-narratives of religious acceptance and pluralism. As she says, 

“By all rights, you would expect such scriptures to protect a religious community’s privileges and diminish the rights of those who do not belong to it, but that is not the case. Instead, these communities have chosen to preserve commands that clarify God’s care for outsiders as well as insiders, religious strangers as well as friends.”

As she closes her chapter that discusses all of this,

No one owns God. God alone knows what is good. For reasons that will never be entirely clear, God has a soft spot for religious strangers, both as agents of divine blessing and recipients of divine grace — to the point that God sometimes chooses one of them over people who believe they should by all rights come first. This is a great mystery, but it does nothing to obscure the great commandment. In every circumstance, regardless of the outcome, the main thing Jesus has asked me to do is love God and my neighbor as religiously as I love myself. The minute I have that handled, I will ask for my next assignment. For now, my hands are full.”

___________

What does it mean to “be saved,” anyway?

All right, moving on to the next bit of your ask: “Wasn't the whole point of Jesus coming so that people would believe and be saved?”

Yes, and no. The problem is that the way most Christians talk about “saving” these days isn’t what it means in the original Greek or Hebrew of scripture.

Nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus say that being saved means what most Christians have come to understand it meaning — something that comes only after you are baptized / accept Jesus as Lord; something that requires being a Christian; something that mainly has to do with the world to come......

Roger Wolsey has some good commentary on what “saved” does tend to mean in the Gospels. He talks about how in the Hebrew of Jesus’s own holy scriptures, salvation means “healing, wholeness, and well-being” rather than being about “believing or accepting certain intellectual assertions”:

“Jesus saved (provided salvation to) numerous people long before he was killed... This reality clearly undermines the idea that no one is saved but for Jesus’ blood shed on a cross. In the Gospels, salvation is experienced when one accepts God’s healing, grace, and love and responds in ways that show it. Jesus also referred to this state of being as experiencing ‘abundant/eternal life’ and living in ‘the kingdom of God.’

I think Jesus’s idea of “saving” shines clearly in his words in John 10:10: “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Not “I have come to kickstart a brand new religion that you must join in order to obtain this abundant life I’m talking about.” Nothing about certain dogma or praxis. The only action he demands of us is the natural response to this abundant love bestowed freely — to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

Examples of Jesus “saving” people in the Gospels tend to focus on removing the things that are impeding their abundant life right here and now, rather than in some world to come. Jesus of the Gospels is far more focused on God’s Kin(g)dom arriving here in this world. 

You can explore the 108(!) occurrences of the Greek word for “save” in the New Testament here to get a feel for what kinds of situations Jesus saved people from and into.

And if you explore my #kingdom come tag, you’ll find some posts talking about what Jesus’s vision of a Kingdom really was, compared to what it’s been turned into by many Christians.

These ideas of Jesus’s salvation also fit more into the ideas shared in the Hebrew Bible. As Dr. Amy-Jill Levine writes of the cry for salvation (Hosanna!) that rings through the Psalms and elsewhere in scripture:

"From what do we seek salvation? From sin, yes. But also from pain, from despair, from loneliness, from poverty, from oppression. We are all in need of some form of salvation. Indeed, the idea of salvation for most of the Scriptures of Israel is not about spiritual matters, but physical ones: the Passover, the setting of the Passion narrative, is about salvation from slavery. God hears our cries. And the stories remind us that people, still, cry out to be saved. Will our cries be heard by others? Will we hear the cries of others? Will God act? Will we?”

Lmao, sorry this is so long, i never learned how to be concise in my life

But hopefully at least a little of it is useful to you! Thank you for asking the question and yeah, I can’t recommend Taylor’s book Holy Envy enough for Christians wishing to come to a better understanding of how to cultivate their own faith while fully respecting and appreciating the faiths of others.

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

Hey I've just read a couple of your posts on your views about conversion and it got me thinking about the way I view God vs the way I was taught to view God. I was taught to see it as God having one set path for every single person, the same path and if you diverge from that in any way you're wrong. As I got older though I realized God made humans. God made us complex and different from one another in a variety of ways so why would God give us only one good, right way to live life? Now I believe that there are billions of ways to live a good life, regardless of religion, gender or sexual orientation, just like there are billions of people. Unfortunately I've never met a christian who feels the same way so church is a very alienating experience for me, especially as an LGBT person. I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, I guess I'm just sad that there's no community for me in my country.

Oof, I’m sorry you feel cut off from anyone who feels the same way you do. That is always a painful experience. I pray that one day you will find at least one person who is excited to engage with you and dialogue about this topic. <3

What you are saying reminds me of the wise and beloved theologian Barbara Brown Taylor’s thoughts in her book Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others.

One metaphor she offers for how different religious/spiritual paths stem from the same source and all offer legitimate ways for connecting to that source is of water and wells: 

For her personally, her well was the Episcopal Church, and her bucket was priesthood, “and,” she explains, “as clearly as I could smell the elemental depths of the divine mystery every time I bent over to draw some of it up -- the well was not the water. It was a container and not the source.” 

Other wells -- other religions or spiritual paths -- are also “the container” rather than “the source,” from which all draw. And Taylor came to see that by visiting other people’s wells and talking to them about their own methods of connecting to that divine mystery, she could gain wisdom that improved her own faith, increased her own understanding of the divine.

If you’re interested in more of Barbara Brown Taylor’s thoughts about the validity of all religious / spiritual paths, I think her words would really resonate with you. I know that it’s not at all the same as having someone you can actually talk to...but the way Taylor writes really welcomes the reader in and almost feels like a conversation, at least it does to me. So you can read all of Holy Envy -- or you can listen to me reading some more passages from it in the 30th episode of my podcast: “No One Owns God: readying yourself for respectful interfaith encounters.”

[a-queer-seminarian]

“ This question about who is in the Church clearly relates, then, to our immediately previous discussion about when the Church comes to be. The more willing we are to allow for a kind of pre-existent Church based upon the natural openness of the human person to the transcendent, the happier we will be being more rather than less inclusive about “who” is in the Church.

At the same time, however, we do not want to fall into the trap of telling people who are perfectly content in their own religious traditions that they are really somehow members of the Church.

And so our problem comes into focus: Because we have defined the Church narrowly and, for most of its existence, over against those who are not part of it, have we perhaps created conditions that make the process of evangelization that much harder? And could it also be the case that we have misunderstood evangelization as the effort to draw others into a Church that stands over against that which is not the Church?

There is a current and highly controversial technical theological debate that tries to get at the truth of who is and who is not part of the Church. Sometimes it goes by the name of “the question of religious pluralism,” and sometimes it comes dressed as “the theology of religions.” Behind its surface concern about the relationship between the truth of Christ and the truths of other religions lie even more profound issues about the nature of the Church and the workings of God in history.

If, as Christians believe, God wills from all eternity (which means in every actual historical moment, not ‘at the beginning’) the salvation of ever single human being, then either God is pretty hopeless at making what God wills happen, or God’s will is not tied to some claim that only inside the Church is salvation possible, or at least much easier. God’s will to the salvation of all means that the design is larger than the Church, though this is not to say that the Church is not essential to that design. Vatican II supports this point by making clear, on the one hand, God’s will for the salvation of all while saying, on the other, that ‘the Church is necessary for salvation’ (LG 14). That is, the existence of the Church, not necessarily the belief in or membership of the Church.

The religious pluralism debate has most commonly been conducted by identifying three basic attitudes to the relationship of the Church in other religious traditions. First, there is an exclusivist attitude, which essentially argues that the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the salvation it brings is not shared at all by other traditions. At its worst this has meant at different historical moments for both Catholics and Protestants that ‘outside the Church there is no salvation,’ though it is pretty safe to say that most Christian believers today do not take such a harsh attitude to other faiths. Indeed, in surveys conducted in the last few years, 85% of Catholics asked said that so long as you believe in God, it really doesn’t matter what religious tradition you belong to.

A second position, more or less that of Vatican II, is labeled inclusivist because while it extends the possibility of salvation way beyond Christianity, indeed to the whole human race, it understands all salvation somehow to occur through the saving actions of God in Christ.

Third, a pluralist position goes beyond the generosity of the inclusivists to a view that is essentially relativist, arguing that Christianity is one way among many that human beings try to give structure to their natural drive to transcendence.

This discussion often becomes more complex, but however it is conducted there are always three understandings of the Church under consideration. The exclusivist sees the Church over against other religions, the inclusivist sees the Church in some mystical sense embracing them, and the pluralist sees the Church standing shoulder to shoulder with them. Christians today can be found in all three camps. ...

While our background awareness as we continue our discussion of the Church must be the conviction that God’s design is so much larger and more mysterious than our knowledge of it, our concern must be with the Church in a somewhat narrower sense. We can perhaps call the Church that sector of the People of God with more focus and definition, characteristics that come not from the virtue of its members but from the fact that it is this group of people who are the recipients and guardians of God’s revelation in Scripture and, above all, in the person of Jesus Christ. ”

from Church: Living Communion by Paul Lakeland