What you fairly point out is, I believe, a distinction without a difference. One faith says that failing to achieve its “heaven” is called “X” and another says its called “Y”. In any case, each religious belief hold as excusive its greatest reward for those who practice the particulars of the faith. Yes, there are differences in the overall worldview of each belief system as your reincarnation example shows. However, they are no less exclusive because of it. Only adhearance to certain particular beliefs garners for the faithful a place of ultimate reward. All others get something else.

And I did mention Islam as being rather closer in that respect.

The old pagan religions, where you wind up in Erebus or something comparable when you fail to meet the test before the judgment seat are also more comparable, but I’m not aware of any major modern religions that follow that pattern. Modern paganism seems to have removed any permanent threatening qualities. And I did say “minority,” not “unique.”

I should also point out that, unfortunately, Christians are often insecure in their arguments, and that insecurity can lead to defensiveness and a lack of gentleness and charity. It’s understandable because our education culture is generally devoid of substantive Christian paideia, and from there it’s all downhill because mainstream culture’s nihilism brings out defensiveness. But it’s not excusable. And there are better ways of preparing ourselves…

I would disagree. Certainly Judaism, Islam, Hindu and the Asian faiths leave those who do not practce their particular disciplines on the outside of the salvation they offer. Even Buddhism denies nirvana to anyone who doesn’t practice the Buddhist faith. The idea that Christianity is different in it’s orientation in this area is a myth.

Do you mean to tell me that the intelligence that created and ordered that is unconcerned about what is good and just and true?

(The answer, by the way, is not to be found in the stars. I doubt you believe in astrology. Nor is it to be found in waving one’s arm. “Hand-waving” is, as you may know, a common description for a completely unsupported point in debate.)

In a universe so huge that it cannot be comprehended, so old that it may for all practical purposes be eternal, an exclusive religion simply does not work. One may make the argument of sin, but the rejoinder is to simply look up at the stars, wave an arm and say, “Do you mean to tell me that the intelligence that created and ordered that is going to worry about such things?”

From that it is but a short leap for those who worry about morality to come to the conclusion that those who believe in a such a deity are, well, not quite right in the head and as such folks are capable of all manner of dreadful things…

Well, you see where it is going.

Christianity certainly is not in the minority. It’s not about what religions claim about themselves it’s about the reality that following one set of beliefs mens you’re not following another. All religious beliefs are exclusive in that regard and no religion says you can achieve the salvation it offers without adhering to it’s own particular beliefs.

Never forget that Jesus says, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” That is why “No one comes to the Father except through me.” To know the Father, therefore, one has to know and accept the Son — there is no morality about it.

Those who claim to have a path to God which does not take them to Jesus at one and the same time are the ones whose morality is thereby placed into question. It is a classic case of projection — because they are uncertain of the truth of their path, they have to assert that no other path is any better.

Instead it is an ethical “should,” as in, “wouldn’t it be morally irresponsible for me to accept this belief [of Biblical Christianity]?”

This is a remarkably astute perception. I never realized that this was happening until I read this superb post. It makes sense and I think it explains much.

The battleground has shifted and I applaud Mr. Gilson’s perceptiveness in alerting us to this shift.

It’s subtle and the tactics/weapons needed to engage this particular front on the field of spiritual warfare is going to be different.

With regards to Mr. Gilson’s request for approaches to this shift by the Enemy, I might try something along the lines of…

“Is it immoral to believe, uphold, and perpetuate a falsehood?”

[If the grounds of conversation have shifted to issues of morality then move to the grounds of subjective morality vs. objective morality and the source of morality.]

So it’s exclusive both as regards to truth claims, which is just another way of saying the law of non-contradiction, but also as far as those who remain outside having any hope of anything other than total, painful destruction. (Exactly how precise one has to be to be counted as inside, or how easily that can be determined by another, is another question entirely. The claim that only Christians can be saved does not have to equate to “only people I recognize as Christians according to my own assessment of the quality of their conformity with a narrow interpretation of the faith can be saved.” I think part, though not all, of the problem people have with exclusivism is the assumption, not always false, that the statement of exclusivism equates to a certain very personally derived definition of who is excluded.)

I’m not saying that this kind of inclusivism as I just defined it is a true picture of reality, or makes sense, or has any kind of logic to it. I’m certainly not saying it is consistent with the law of non-contradiction. Inclusivism of this sort is obviously wrong when viewed from the standpoint of basic logic.

Nevertheless people believe it (in some confused sense or other), regardless of that. Not only do they believe it, they think it’s morally wrong to disagree with it. So we need to make two cases with respect to this kind of inclusivism. One is that Jesus Christ truly is the one way to the one God (the question of truth); the other is that believing that is so does not make one a bad person (the question of morality).