So says the sub-heading to a recent article by Boston University, Professor of Religion, Stephen Prothero, published on The Boston Globe’s website.

In what is a mostly helpful article, Prothero affirms and makes clear how the differing religious viewpoints and systems of this world teach and affirm incompatible concepts. In the Wikipedia of the man, it describes him, self-referentially so, as a “confused Christian” that is based on a quotation from this article in USA Today, which becomes clearer as the article opens the door to allowing each incompatible religion having its own sub-set of incompatible truth.  If such is indeed what Prothero is claiming, while such would seem to be philosophically untenable, it would, more importantly, also be theologically untrue!

We will get to this point shortly, but for now, here is how this piece is introduced, which nicely sets the tenor and tone…

At least since the first petals of the counterculture bloomed across Europe and the United States in the 1960s, it has been fashionable to affirm that all religions are beautiful and all are true. This claim, which reaches back to “All Religions Are One” (1795) by the English poet, printmaker, and prophet William Blake, is as odd as it is intriguing. No one argues that different economic systems or political regimes are one and the same. Capitalism and socialism are so self-evidently at odds that their differences hardly bear mentioning. The same goes for democracy and monarchy. Yet scholars continue to claim that religious rivals such as Hinduism and Islam, Judaism and Christianity are, by some miracle of the imagination, both essentially the same and basically good.

This view resounds in the echo chamber of popular culture, not least on the “Oprah Winfrey Show” and in Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestseller, “Eat Pray Love,” where the world’s religions are described as rivers emptying into the ocean of God. Karen Armstrong, author of “A History of God,” has made a career out of emphasizing the commonalities of religion while eliding their differences. Even the Dalai Lama, who should know better, has gotten into the act, claiming that “all major religious traditions carry basically the same message.”

Of course, those who claim that the world’s religions are different paths up the same mountain do not deny the undeniable fact that they differ in some particulars. Obviously, Christians do not go on pilgrimage to Mecca, and Muslims do not practice baptism. Religious paths do diverge in dogma, rites, and institutions. To claim that all religions are basically the same, therefore, is not to deny the differences between a Buddhist who believes in no god, a Jew who believes in one God, and a Hindu who believes in many gods. It is to deny that those differences matter, however. From this perspective, whether God has a body (yes, say Mormons; no, say Muslims) or whether human beings have souls (yes, say Hindus; no, say Buddhists) is of no account because, as Hindu teacher Swami Sivananda writes, “The fundamentals or essentials of all religions are the same. There is difference only in the nonessentials.”

This is a lovely sentiment but it is untrue, disrespectful, and dangerous.

This opening piece is quite hopeful, and when I read the full article, I waitied for him to tie the piece together, by dealing with the implications of what he was stating which are thus:  If all these religious systems hold to truth claims that affirm contradictory concepts, realities, and worldviews, which are mutually exclusive and exclusionary… which ONE is correct.  For example, if the concept of sin as a human problem… period, is TRUE, which the Bible claims this is so [Rom 3:23; 5:12], then all those in the first Adam [insert: All the human race post Adam and Eve] have this problem, and affirming that other systems don’t ask these type of questions reality-begging, at best.

Now, it is also true that as a Professor of Religion, this might not be his stated goal or methodology, however, in light of the recent “sin” statements, this is fudging on the explicit implications, with the following words emblematic…

There is a long tradition of Christian thinkers who assume that salvation is the goal of all religions and then argue that only Christians can achieve this goal. Philosopher of religion Huston Smith, who grew up in China as a child of Methodist missionaries, rejected this argument but not its guiding assumption. “To claim salvation as the monopoly of any one religion,” he wrote, “is like claiming that God can be found in this room and not the next.” It might seem to be an admirable act of empathy to assert that Confucians and Buddhists can be saved. But this statement is confused to the core, since salvation is not something that either Confucians or Buddhists seek. Salvation is a Christian goal, and when Christians speak of it, they are speaking of being saved from sin. But Confucians and Buddhists do not believe in sin, so it makes no sense for them to try to be saved from it. And while Muslims and Jews do speak of sin of a sort, neither Islam nor Judaism describes salvation from sin as its aim. When a jailer asks the apostle Paul, “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30), he is asking not a generic human question but a specifically Christian one. So while it may seem to be an act of generosity to state that Confucians and Buddhists and Muslims and Jews can also be saved, this statement is actually an act of obfuscation. [Emphasis Mine]

While analytically what Prothero is stating is indeed so, is this not missing the point?

Once again, from a Biblical worldview, anyone or anything else that is asking “redemptive” questions and answering them through any other Avenue that does not venture through the “One Way” intersection signposted with “Jesus Christ… alone,” is proposing something false, untrue, and contradicts the scope of This revelatory truth claim.  Yes, it is true, these other religions are not asking the same questions, and they are not looking for exactly the same realities, but this perspective really only holds value if they all equally have validated truth, which means, while you can reject “Jesus,” “Buddha” will see you right!  Jesus claims this is not so!

If Christianity is true, by the very nature of the claims that it is making, all other claims are absolved!

Prothero is very helpful in showing why and how the different religious systems are incompatible, however, he fails to ask the really important question, which is this… What Does This Mean?

Jesus stated He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, with NO ONE, coming to the Father through any other means [John 14:6].  With these statements, Jesus was and is claiming that His is the system of reality that is really real, really true, and only right!  Subsequently, Peter also claimed, to those that claimed to have Moses as their father, that there is NO OTHER Name… Anywhere… that will solve the human problem and answer this condition.  Prothero affirms that this is specifically a Christian question, while the Word of God affirms that this is the UNIVERSALLY human answer.

This is not about forensic analysis, but forensic righteousness, solving our alien-ated issue of our perpetual enmity toward a holy Trinitarian Creator-God… Mutually Exclusive?  Heaven Yeah!

Yes, these are exclusive claims, but these are also exclusive claims that have the potential to include all others [John 3;16], with failure to understand this reality, resulting in a conceptual world that is truly misleading and dangerous… and we should add, the Word of God claims to be, eternally so!

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