From the interview with Presiding Bishop-elect Katharine Jeffert Schori in Time magazine:
Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven?
We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.
Quite reasonable, an intellectual, not a fundy.
ReplyDeleteWhy should we expect the Word to be limited to Christians?
ReplyDeleteJon
Al and John,
ReplyDeleteI think you are missing the point a little bit on this one. There is nothing uniquely Christian about the response to this question. It ignores Jesus' absolute claims and instead articulates theological pluriformity.
She sould have said, "We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as the vehicle to the divine (i.e., the way, the truth, and the life, that no one comes to the Father except through him)." That's not fundamentalism, it is what distinquishes Christianity as a religion. It is what the martyrs gave their lives for. Jesus is Lord of all and a universal savior--not a national diety with a particular set of rules for one group of people.
For us to assume that God could not act in other ways is to "put him in a box", yes. But it is an academic issue. We could also say that to assume that God could not be incarnate as a stone or a pumpkin would "put him in a box." However, God has already done these things (been inarnate as a man, Jesus, who is the savior of the whole world).
We have not limited his sovereignty, he has revealed the reality of these truths to us.