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THE UNIQUENESS OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIAN MISSIONS

A longstanding issue in missions has been where to draw the correct boundaries between contextualization (relating to a culture) and syncretism (blending in with the religious values of a culture). My friend S. Escobar, a Peruvian missiologist, and I grappled with some of these questions for several hours as we discussed the christopaganism prevalent in a particular culture. Yet we also had to note how some western missionaries had failed to make the gospel culturally relevant or had mixed up their own cultures' values with Christ's gospel. 

Because I am a NT scholar, our discussion turned my thoughts to many of the same issues that Christians had to face even from the start. In Paul's day, for instance, some missionaries insisted on circumcising all Gentile converts; by contrast, Paul took a firm stand for contextualization (1 Cor 9:20; Gal 6:13-15). But he no less firmly stood against some typical Gentile sexual practices (1 Cor 6:9-20), and he insisted on the worship of one God rather than the gods most Gentiles worshiped (1 Thess 1:9). 

Recognizing where the NT writers drew the lines between proper contextualization and syncretism can help us today. Today we rightly recognize that many of our religious practices that do not specifically reflect biblical norms are simply contextualized for our cultures. Most of us realize that churches in one part of the world dare not impose their culture on churches in other parts of the world. Yet we have not always guarded against syncretism; we have sometimes adopted pagan ideologies from our culture, such as a religious relativism that allows many gods or many ways of salvation. Adopting this relativism is the very sort of syncretism against which the NT preaches most forcefully. 

Jesus as the Way of Salvation in the New Testament

The NT allows us considerable diversity on secondary customs such as food customs and holy days (Romans 14), but is firm in its insistence on the worship of one God through Jesus Christ. The Jewish people had maintained their monotheism at a great price in a larger Mediterranean world that proclaimed the worship of many gods. When Christians began to proclaim that Jesus was humanity's rightful Lord and that all people owe him allegiance, their "tolerant," polytheistic society found the Christians' intolerance intolerable, often leading to persecution against Christians. 

Yet so convinced were the early Christians that Jesus was the only way of salvation that they regarded not only polytheists as outside the scope of salvation, but even many of their fellow monotheists. Even professing Christians who depended on something in addition to Christ's sacrifice (Gal 5:4) could be viewed as outside the scope of salvation. This restriction also applied to the Jewish community. Throughout John's Jewish Christian Gospel he portrays the Judean leaders as hostile to Christ; they embodied the "world" no less than the Roman authorities with whom their opposition to Christ is allied (e.g., 9:22; 12:42; 15:18-25; 16:2). All the "world" was already under judgment until Christ came and offered an alternative (3:17-18); he alone is the "way" to the Father (14:6). If even fellow monotheists may be excluded from eternal life, how much more those who worshiped other gods? 

Other NT writers also affirmed Jesus as the only way of salvation for everyone. In his letter to the Romans Paul summons an ethnically divided church in Rome (consisting of both Jewish and Gentile Christians) to reconciliation. He does this in part through reminding his audience that all of us come to God on the same terms. Jews and Gentiles are equally lost (Romans 1-3), but God provides the same method of salvation for both (Romans 4-8). Many Jewish people believed they were chosen for salvation in Abraham, but Paul argues that it is not ethnic descent from Abraham that saves us (ch. 4), especially since all of us are descended from Adam (5:12-21). The law is good but cannot make us righteous (ch. 7). God does not need to choose us for salvation based on our descent from Abraham (ch. 9). Then Paul reminds Gentile Christians not to look down on Jewish Christians (ch. 11), warning Christians not to be divided over food customs and holy days that typically separated Jew and Gentile (ch. 14), and reminding them that both Christ and Paul himself were ministers across Jewish-Gentile lines (ch. 15). In short, Paul's letter to the Romans is a tract about racial reconciliation in Christ-founded on the truth that Jesus is the only way of salvation for any of us. 

The apostolic witness preserved for us in the NT provides many complementary perspectives on salvation: We are saved from sin, from punishment, from demonic powers, and so forth. But all of these models share a common element: There is a transition from the former state to the new state that depends on Christ. No one is simply saved because they started out that way without Christ; notice some of the diverse New Testament models of salvation:
· Justified by faith in Christ (Rom 5:1)
· Saved by faith in Christ (Acts 15:8-11)
· Passed from death to life (John 5:24)
· Born again (John 3:3-5; 1 Pet 1:3, 23)
· Transferred from darkness to light (Acts 26:18; 1 Pet 2:9)
· Transferred from evil's kingdom to God's (Acts 26:18; Col 1:13)
· Former enemies reconciled to God (Rom 5:10) 
If even works based in God's inspired law are not enough for salvation, could any other works or form of salvation be enough? (In contrast to some antinomian versions of Protestantism, we believe that genuine saving faith must be demonstrated by obedience; but like all historic Christians, we reject salvation by works without faith.) 

No one can be saved apart from depending on Christ, and the apostolic sermons in Acts and elsewhere were preached as if God demanded a response to the message of Christ (Acts 2:37-38; 3:19, 26; 4:12; 11:18; 13:46; 20:21). This is not a peripheral issue, like many issues that divide us today, but the heart of the apostolic gospel. We could respond by denying that the apostolic witness was true, arguing that we know better and that had Jesus' words been better preserved, he might have agreed with us. But the evidence we do have from Jesus' first followers gives us one gospel, in which the necessity of Christ (and of embracing him by faith) is no less central than the proclamation of his resurrection. 

This perspective is often uncomfortable for us, as it must have been for the first Christians. Like us, the first Christians must have known and loved many people who did not share their faith in Jesus Christ. They could have resolved the resulting emotional conflict the way some do today-by denying that others need Christ to be fully reconciled to God. Instead, many of them sacrificed to make sure everyone heard their message. Many truths in the world remain unpleasant; for example, some 40,000 people die each day of starvation and malnutrition. We can respond to such unpleasant facts by denying that they are true, making our own lives more pleasant; or we can live like these facts are true, sacrificing our own resources for the needs of others. The apostolic witness behind the NT summons us to sacrifice so we may share Christ's message lovingly with a world for whom he died. God has offered us the power of his Spirit for this task. 

Objections

Given the stakes, it is not at all surprising that people would offer objections to this position. There is not space here to respond to all the objections raised on the basis of specific passages, but in most cases the context is clear enough to answer the objections; various commentators, including myself, have addressed these texts in more academic settings. But we should respond to at least some of the objections that people have raised. 

Some have questioned whether God can be fair and condemn people for rejecting Christ when they do not know enough about him. But the NT never implies that people are condemned for rejecting what they do not know; rather, people are condemned for their sins. Paul suggests that all rational people know enough to know that they have mistreated others (Rom 2:12); yet these objects of our mistreatment are people made in God's image. Likewise Paul, like some of his Jewish contemporaries, argued that enough knowledge is available in creation to make people morally responsible for neglecting the true God (Rom 1:18-23). We are already in a state of condemnation; that is why we need to embrace Christ (Rom 3:9-23; John 3:18). 

To be sure, some know more than others, hence will receive severer punishment (Luke 12:47-48; Rom 2:12); but lighter punishment is still punishment. The Bible also suggests that God has some special ways to make sure the gospel gets to those with the most seeking hearts (Acts 10:4-5), though this does not diminish our responsibility to take the gospel to all people, since most hearts are not seeking him very much (Rom 3:11). 

Because we have all sinned against God and others made in his image, God would still be just to condemn all humanity; yet in his great love he gave his own Son to redeem all humanity. But he allows us free will to embrace or reject the gift for which Jesus' blood paid; and he allows us free will to embrace or reject the commission to take his message to others. That the opportunity to receive the gospel is inequitably distributed is unjust, like the structural injustices that lead to the inequitable distribution of food in the world. But I would argue that neither example indicts the justice or compassion of God; rather, they indict the realism and obedience of his church. 

Some point out that God did not expect people to trust in Christ for salvation before Christ came. This is true, but as an objection it is beside the point. Abraham was justified by faith in God's promise (Gen 15:6), but the Israelites in Moses' day could not tell Moses to leave them alone because they believed Abraham's promise; at a new stage in salvation history, true people of faith would respond to the new revelation that carried forward the old. With the coming of Jesus, God raises the stakes to a new level, and summons people to faith (Acts 14:15-17; 17:30). 

Even if we settle all the intellectual questions, however, many of us struggle on an existential level with the demand that all people embrace Christ for salvation. I was a convert from atheism who saw quite clearly the difference before and after my conversion. But many people I love dearly have never chosen to follow the Christ I love, and that was so painful to me that I honestly wanted to find in the Scriptures a hope that they might be saved even if they do not turn to Christ. There is also the pressure of fitting into a "tolerant" society, that often says in short: We will tolerate you if you tell us we are fine the way we are. But loyalty to the apostolic gospel does not afford us the luxury of that compromise. The pain we feel over those who reject Christ or, worse yet, have little opportunity to know about him, is only a fraction of the pain that God, who sacrificed his son for all humanity, must feel. But may we respond to this pain not by indifference or being so overwhelmed that we pretend the situation is other than what it is. May we instead respond, as God does, by sacrificing whatever is necessary to bring Christ's message of hope and love to the world to whom Christ has sent us. 

By Craig Keener, Professor of New Testament at Eastern Seminary; author of nine books, including A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Wm.B. Eerdmans); The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (InterVarsity); and Paul, Women & Wives (Hendrickson).