Is Jesus the Only Way?

Point I

The Diagnosis

The Gravity of Sin Demands a Divine-Human Savior

The first conclusion these thinkers bring us to is about the diagnosis of the human condition. The problem of human sin is so grave, so infinitely deep, that only a divine-human Savior can resolve it. We often think of sin as just making mistakes—a few bad habits, a lack of enlightenment, or a psychological glitch. If that is the diagnosis, then the cure is simply a good teacher or a new meditation technique. But the Christian diagnosis is far more severe.

The 11th-century philosopher Anselm of Canterbury, in his groundbreaking Cur Deus Homo?, used rigorous logic to explain this. Because God is infinitely holy and good, human rebellion creates an infinite debt of honor. Humanity owes the debt, but being finite and broken, we are utterly incapable of paying it. God, being infinite, has the capacity to pay it, but He doesn't owe it. The only logical solution is a mediator who is both fully God and fully human.

Centuries earlier, the church father Athanasius looked at this same problem in On the Incarnation. He called it the "divine dilemma." God's justice demanded that the penalty of death be carried out. But God's immense goodness could not bear to watch His crowning creation be corrupted and destroyed.

John Stott, in The Cross of Christ, anchors this in the Apostle Paul's words in Romans 3:23–25. At the cross, divine love and divine justice intersect perfectly through "self-substitution." God doesn't just forgive sin by waving a magic wand—that would violate His justice. Instead, He takes the penalty upon Himself.

No other religion diagnoses the human disease with such terminal severity, and therefore, no other religion offers a cure as radical as God Himself stepping into the quarantine zone to take the disease upon Himself.

Point II

The Cure

A Unique, Unrepeatable Historical Event

Many religions are based on timeless, abstract principles. If a religion is just a set of moral philosophies—like "be kind to your neighbor" or "detach from earthly desires"—then it doesn't really matter if the founder actually existed. The philosophy works regardless. But Christianity is fundamentally different. It is not a philosophy; it is news. It is an announcement about something that happened in history.

The great missionary and theologian Lesslie Newbigin tackled this in The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. After spending decades in India, Newbigin returned to a Western culture that tried to relegate religion to private, subjective opinion. He forcefully pushed back, arguing that the gospel is "public truth," grounded in the dirt and blood of first-century Palestine.

Because it is a historical event, it cannot be replicated. You cannot have "another" cross any more than you can have "another" first moon landing. D. A. Carson, in The Gagging of God, expands on this by looking at the entire narrative arc of the Bible. Postmodern pluralism tries to "gag" God by saying no one can claim absolute truth. But the exclusivity of Christ isn't an isolated, arrogant claim; it is the necessary climax of the Bible's entire "plot-line."

Similarly, the Dutch missiologist Hendrik Kraemer, in The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, built his entire theology on "biblical realism." The Christian revelation is completely theocentric—it comes from God downward to us, not from humanity reaching upward to God. It is an invasion of grace into human history.

If salvation were about us climbing up to God, there could be many paths up the mountain. But if salvation is about God coming down the mountain to rescue us because we are hopelessly lost, then the only way is the path He carved out when He came down.

Point III

The Contrast

The Inadequacy of All Other Paths

Because of who Jesus is and what He has done, all other religious paths are fundamentally inadequate and must be confronted by the gospel. Among our eight scholars, there is a spectrum of thought on how exactly to view other religions. But whether they take a hard line or a more generous view, they all arrive at the absolute supremacy of Christ.

On the generous end of the spectrum, Gavin D'Costa, a Roman Catholic theologian, represents "inclusivism" in Christianity and the World Religions. D'Costa believes that God's grace might operate in mysterious ways outside the visible church. Yet, even D'Costa draws a hard line against pluralism. If anyone is saved, anywhere, at any time, they are saved exclusively by the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

On the other end, Daniel Strange offers a Reformed exclusivist view in Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock. He uses the fascinating phrase "subversive fulfillment." Human beings are made in God's image, so we have genuine spiritual longings. Other religions try to answer those longings, but because of sin, their answers are distorted. When the gospel arrives, it subversively fulfills them—confronting their idols while answering their deepest questions.

Hendrik Kraemer takes this further, calling Jesus the "crisis" of all religions. When Kraemer uses the word crisis, he means it in the Greek sense of a judgment or turning point. Christ does not come to top off or complete other religions; He comes to judge them and call people to radical conversion.

Even D. A. Carson reminds us that the modern idea of "tolerance"—the idea that all religions are equally true—is actually a deeply intolerant dogma. It demands that everyone abandon their specific truth claims to bow to the god of pluralism. But Christians cannot do this, because to abandon the exclusivity of Christ is to abandon Christ Himself.

The Witnesses

Eight Scholars, One Answer

From the early church fathers to modern theologians, spanning 1,600 years of Christian thought

The Foundation

Scripture References