Reading Blog: Knowing Christ Today, Chapter 7

(This is part 8 in my series on Dallas Willard’s latest book, Knowing Christ Today. Previous Entries: Intro | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6)

Knowledge of Christ and Christian Pluralism

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

How can a Christian claim knowledge of Christ in a pluralistic society, where there is an increasingly hostile posture toward any religious claims to exclusive truth?

First, it simply cannot be avoided that knowledge inherently excludes by nature because, again, knowledge cannot avoid being about what is true – a state which, by necessity excludes all contradictions. If the car is out of gasoline, then declaring it so is true, a fact that logically excludes other statements such as “The car has gasoline” and “the car is not out of gasoline.” Such knowledge cannot be avoided in real life (in fact, we couldn’t survive without it), and any discipline that seeks to avoid the trueness of genuine knowledge relegates itself to the realm of the absurd, irrelevant, and possibly even the dangerous (untruth in medicine and rock climbing, for example, can get you killed). There is no plausibility for a pluralism that either denies truth or claims truth for every proposition.

However, Willard states there is an important sense in which a certain kind of pluralism is vitally important and it begins with the humble acknowledgment that even if we are convinced we are right we know we are not infallible. This is nothing less than the Christian ideal of loving one’s neighbor:

“This distinctively Christian imperative is precisely based on the knowledge of God, Christ, and right and wrong that we claim as Christ followers. It concerns respect for the sincere efforts of human beings to do what they believe to be good and right.”

Willard spends some time exploring the difference between what he calls “weak pluralism,” the position that all religions may hold some reflection of the truth about God, and “strong pluralism,” which insists that that there are no real differences at all between religions. He says there is no reason for a Christian to reject the former, but that no serious thinking person could hold to the latter. A cursory examination of the major religions reveals there are too many contradictions between the faiths. More often than not, strong pluralism is simply a veneer for polite agnosticism.

Is Christ Exclusive?
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father but by me” (John 14:6). What does this mean? Willard points out the obvious dilemma: If no person can be accepted by God without personal knowledge of the historical Jesus then billions of people are denied access to God by simply being born in the wrong place at the wrong time.

However, Willard maintains that Christ’s words about himself as the exclusive way were not a reference to himself in the historical sense, but in the cosmic sense, that is, himself as the Logos, the eternal Word of God. This, he says, is demonstrated by the fact that in that very moment, even though the disciples knew the historical Jesus of Nazareth personally, they still did not know him as Christ (John 14:7-9). In other words, it’s not the historical Jesus of Nazareth that is “the way,” rather, it is the eternal person of Christ (which, of course, certainly includes the incarnate Jesus). This Christ, says Willard, is always “the way” to the Father, even if it is without knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth:

“Where there really is a way to God, where there really is truth about God, where there is genuine life of God, Christ is there.”

What Willard is saying here, very simply, is that anyone, anywhere, at any time can have a limited measure of true knowledge about God, and even respond in faith to the saving grace of God, without ever hearing about the historical Jesus, and that whenever this happens it is always via “the way” of grace made exclusively by Christ.

Perhaps more shocking to some, Willard is careful to say this is not the gospel (no surprise to those who have read Willard’s previous works). A minimum cosmic acceptance by God (the “ticket to heaven” form of salvation) is not the good news. Indeed, Willard says it is not very good news anyway, since we’re still left here on earth to deal with the horrors and injustices of life. Rather, the gospel is that the Kingdom of God is readily available now to those who will become disciples of Christ, and that gospel does require knowledge of the historical Jesus and his teachings for it is only by following his teachings that we can be apprenticed into an eternal kind of life that partners with the Kingdom rhythms of God by the Holy Spirit and overcome to the evils of this world.

Questions:

  1. What has been your position on the exclusive nature of Christ? Has it changed over time?
  2. What are your thoughts on Dallas Willard’s separation of the gospel of the Kingdom from the possibility of God’s acceptance of us? Is this the first time you’ve heard of an “inclusive” view? If not, where else have you heard it?
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