Religious Pluralism is a post-modern way of thinking that rejects the idea that any one religion is true, rather, all religions are equally true and equally valid ways to God. While pluralistic efforts at trying to support equality, tolerance, and dialogue may be noteworthy in some instances, there are serious philosophical, historical, and logical flaws in this type of thinking. In this post I will deal with Jesus’ claims to divinity. If it can be demonstrated that Jesus claimed to be God, then Religious Pluralism suffers a fatal blow. Why is that?
“In our day of religious relativism and pluralism it is politically incorrect to claim that one religion is absolutely true. All religions have to be equally valid ways to God. But if you insist on being politically correct, then somehow you’ve got to get Jesus out of the way. For his radical, personal claims to be the unique Son of God, the absolute revelation of God the Father, the sole mediator between God and man, are frankly embarrassing and offensive to the politically correct mindset. The Jesus of the gospels is not politically correct!”
-William Lane Craig
Religious Pluralists, when asked about who Jesus was, will often say that he was a good teacher, a guru, a messenger of God, a wise sage, etc. Are those conclusions justified? Let’s take a close look at Jesus’ actions and speech and the actions and speech of those who saw and heard his actions and speech. To make things simpler we will look at four areas of Jesus’ life:
-Things Jesus said
-Things Jesus did
-Things that others said to/about Jesus
-Things that others did to/about Jesus
Things Jesus Said
-He claimed to be the Son of Man who “was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed” and was talked about in the Jewish apocalyptic tradition. See Mark 14:61-64 and Daniel 7:13-14
-He claimed to be the “I AM” of the Old Testament. He took the personal name of God, which the Jews never even dared to utter because they believed it was so sacred, and applied it to himself! See John 8:24 & 58 and Exodus 3:14
-He claimed to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life. In addition to being the sole path by which mankind may approach God. See John 14:6
Things Jesus Did
-He forgave sins (or he, at least, claimed to have the authority and power to forgive sins). See Mark 2:7-11
-Not only did he never forbid anyone from worshiping him, he accepted worship from individuals and groups on numerous occasions. See Matthew 14:33, 28:9-10, Luke 24:51, and John 20:27-28**
**Compare Jesus’ actions to those of the prophets or of the disciples, or even angels who refused to be worshiped and even rebuked those who were worshiping them. (Acts 10:25-26 and Revelation 19:10)
Things That Others Said to/about Jesus
-Individuals and groups willingly worshiped him, called him “Son of God”, “Lord and God”, and other titles which were reserved only for God, and were not rebuked for doing so. In addition to the above references on Jesus accepting worship, see Matthew 8:2 and John 9:37-38
Things That Others Did to/about Jesus
-The Jews tried to stone him for claiming to be divine. See John 8:58
-Another group of Jews attempted to throw him off of a cliff after he claimed that the promise of the coming of the Kingdom of God was fulfilled in himself! See Luke 4:17-29
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the son of God: or else a madman or something worse. – CS Lewis
To say that Jesus was simply a good teacher is to completely ignore the Gospel accounts of his life and ministry. The Religious Pluralist has to deal with these claims of Jesus and manage them somehow, but pluralism cannot accommodate the radical claims and actions of Jesus. The pluralistic worldview shoots itself in the foot. In claiming that all religions are true and equally valid ways to God, it has to attempt to, in some fashion, reconcile Jesus’ unique claims to being divine and being the only way to salvation and make sense of them in relation to the idea that no one worldview or belief system is more true than another.
“You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” -CS Lewis
Precisely! I have another article coming out soon where I show that, even if we take the NT documents to be unreliable, we can establish that Jesus made divine claims about himself!
When I was a sophomore in college I had a Humanities textbook that actually said Jesus’ followers claimed He was divine, but He never made that claim for Himself. This is of course complete balderdash, as this article points out, and it astounds me that such statements could ever be published in a scholarly book intended for higher education. Unless someone utterly dismisses the Gospel of John (which some scholars are wont to do for some reason or another) there is absolutely no merit for the idea that Jesus only presented Himself as a moral teacher and Rabbi. Even without John’s gospel there is evidence that he considered Himself to be at least God’s representative in claiming to be able to forgive sins.