It’s a common assumption that in order to be Christian, a person must believe that Jesus is the only way to salvation and that Christianity is superior to all other religions. Progressive Christianity spreads the good news that there is a way to be Christian without making this claim. There is a way to follow the Christ while honoring the possibility that followers of other religions are also led to the love that is God.
Certain Bible passages are often used to suggest that Christianity is the only way to God. The best-known is John 14: 6, where Jesus is quoted as saying “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” Another is John 11: 25-26: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.” The gospel of John contains a number of “I am” statements attributed to Jesus: “I am the door”, “I am the bread of life”, “I am the light of the world”, “I am the good shepherd”, “I am the true vine”, “Before Abraham was, I am”. These statements may refer to the Exodus story of Moses and the burning bush. When Moses asked the voice from the burning bush who he was, God’s answer was “I AM”. In these “I am” statements in the gospel of John, the writer may have suggested that Jesus was identifying himself as God.
Many Christians use the “I am” statements in John as proof that Jesus is the only way to God and salvation, and therefore that Christianity is the only true faith. But it’s important to look at the assumptions behind this claim. First, it assumes that the Bible is the last word on the subject of religion. This makes no sense to adherents of other religions which have their own sacred texts, some of which also make claims to exclusive truth. Nor is it compelling to non-Christians who don’t start with the assumption that the Bible is the authoritative expression of God. Attempting to use the Bible as proof of the truth of one’s interpretation of the Bible is an example of tautology, or circular reasoning. Christians can employ their God-given reason to question those parts of the Bible that violate common sense or common decency. It is appropriate for Christians to think critically about any passage in the Bible that suggests that Christianity is the only true faith. Being a Christian does not depend on a rigid presumption that every word of the Bible is literally true or even particularly useful. The Jesus Seminar, a group of biblical scholars who have evaluated the historical accuracy of quotes attributed to Jesus in the gospels, concluded that the “I am” statements in John are very unlikely to contain the authentic words of Jesus. They were instead reflections of the beliefs of the branch of the early Christian community associated with the writer of the gospel of John.
Another issue is that the first-century Christian community from which the gospel of John emerged did not anticipate the Christian religion as we have come to know it. It’s particularly ironic that “proof-texts” for the exclusive truth of Christianity used by evangelical American Christians today are drawn from this most mystical, most “gnostic”, and least historically-focused of the four gospels. It is the gospel that is the least focused on supposed “facts” about Jesus, yet it is the most often quoted to support the supposed “fact” of Christian religious supremacy. The theology of the first-century community around the writer of John was not the same as the orthodoxy of evangelicals today. For instance, the infancy of Jesus is not mentioned at all in John, so it has nothing to say about the doctrine of the virgin birth.
Good news: there is a way to interpret the “I am” passages which liberates them from religious chauvinism. Jesus was a mystic, especially as he is depicted in John. That is, he experienced God directly, within himself. Many Christian mystics have shared this experience over the last 2,000 years. The “I am” passages may be Jesus’ poetic expressions of such a mystical experience in which his personality and ego fell away and the only reality he sensed was that of God. If this is how we understand the passages, then when Jesus said “I am the way ... no one comes to the Father, but by me”, this may mean that the way to God was to become one with God, as Jesus did. It may mean that we do not get to God through dogma or doctrine, but rather through mystical union with God, an experience shared by mystics of many religions throughout history.
Other passages in the Bible provide helpful language to express religious pluralism. Philippians 2: 5-7 is a beautiful expression of the humility of the Christ: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” We might well ask: how could the religion of an empty man get so full of itself that it would claim to be the only true faith? Integral to having a mind of humility among ourselves is abandonment of any claim to the superiority of our religion. Our walk of faith is hindered by this hubris, and it is insulting and hurtful to others. Jesus said “whoever would be great among you must be your servant.” (Matthew 20: 26) To declare that we have the true faith compared to all others would contradict our calling as servants. It gets in the way of having a mind of humility. The highest values of our religion, the very reasons that we follow the path of the Christ, are contradicted by claiming that Christianity is superior to other faiths.
The gospel stories of Jesus portray him as a faithful, devoted Jew who had no intention of crossing the boundaries of his native faith. Instead, as he said in his Sermon on the Mount, he intended to fulfill the law of Israel completely. In his view, that entailed not only following the letter of the law, but following it all the way to its source in divine compassion. He set an example for us to emulate: follow the particularity of your religion all the way to its wellsprings in the love that is God. Once you are there, you will find that you drink from the same well as people of other traditions. (See John chapter 4, the story of Jesus drinking water with the woman at the well in Samaria.) This is what led Jesus to serve and honor gentiles and Samaritans, people outside the boundaries of Judaism.
Christians who immerse themselves in the spiritual practices of their tradition and follow Jesus with acts of selfless service to others discover that they have very much more in common with serious practitioners of other religions than they have differences. While these differences exist, and should be respected, they are trivial compared to the shared spiritual experiences of people across religious boundaries.
In Revelation 21, there is a vision of a heavenly city coming down to earth that is culturally and religiously pluralistic: “And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light shall the nations walk; and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory into it, and its gates shall never be shut by day - and there shall be no night there; they shall bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.” This indescribable, effulgent presence of the divine transcends every religion, including our own, and calls us into deep communion with people of all faiths.
