“The Morality of Christian Exclusivism
Verdict: Moral.

No, no, no, wait. Tom’s got part 4 coming. Kudo’s to Tom for parts 1, 2, & 3.

Verdict: Moral.

Shall we rebuke theistic evolutionists as well?

First, I mentioned the image of God here. I thought that implied that we were created by God.

Second, this is not something that I think needs hammering out for these purposes. It was parenthetical to the point of this article.

I agree, the Fall could be added to the list. It’s hard to know what to include or not to include. The three I listed are unique to Christianity, whereas much of what we know about who God is, the creation, man in the image of God, etc. is in Judaism as well. That doesn’t mean they’re not all core to Christianity, as you have rightly said about one of them in particular.

We certainly need to tell the whole story, I agree with that.

There are three core beliefs above all others in Christianity: the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection.

Can the Incarnation, Crucifixion, & Resurrection make any sense if you don’t have Gen. 3: the Fall of man, and the promised Seed to come? Can they make any sense if the skeptic doesn’t understand why he needs the God-man, Savior, and Redeemer to die in his place? Why he needs to be saved in the first place?

Can Gen. 3 and the fall of man from grace make any sense if you don’t have Gen. 1 and God as Creator of man and all things? An understanding of man and his position in this created order?

Christianity is a system that claims to be the ‘only’ system to make sense of all reality and man as he finds himself. To claim that ‘there are three core beliefs above all others in Christianity’, is insufficient in my view, and misses the core of why the God-man had to come, die horribly on a cross, and be resurrected as conquering death in the first place. The morality of Christian exclusivism entails more than the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection and we should be telling the whole story.

I agree: there is a problem associated with “convincing the unbelievers that one exclusivist belief system is the Truth over the claims of other exclusivist belief systems.” (But that’s not the problem I’ve been writing about in this series.)

“First let’s think for a few moments about religious inclusivism. Here’s how the prevailing idea goes: no religion has primacy over any other. The different faiths are just different paths up the same mountain. We are all blind men trying to understand an elephant. We all have equal though different pieces of the one truth.”

Sure that is the standard inclusivist or liberal theological position. In some ways, though, it misses the point of the debate today.

What if the different paths are different paths up all together different mountains? Buddhism is not Christianity and they are, ultimately, different.

There are multiple exclusive paths existing at once in today’s world. And so, the question has to be asked: Why choose one exclusive path over another and why stay committed to it over time? Showing the value of one exclusive belief system in a nonarrogant way is the central problem that many missionaries face today.

To be sure, this is *not* the stereotypical view that anything goes and everything is equal– the dreaded relativism. Rather, these different faiths are genuinely different. They entail different values systems, origin stories, eschatologies, call on their believers to conduct their selves in different ways, etc. It is never possible to just do or say whatever one wants; there are concrete possibilities. Convincing the unbelievers that one exclusivist belief system is the Truth over the claims of other exclusivist belief systems is the concrete problem–not so much the inclusivist liberalism that so many fear.

Do you have an original or coherent thought to share? If so, it would be great if you would get to it. Your dismissive (and unsupported) ramblings have brought absolutely nothing to any discussion you have weighed in on.

You wrote, “The Cross does not inspire reverence in the unbeliever, it inspires disgust.”

This statement provokes two responses, the first being “Well, duh! If the cross inspires reverence in someone then they are probably already a believer, aren’t they?” The second response is, “Why should believers care what the cross inspires in unbelievers?”

Next you trot out a rather worn-out anology claiming that someone tried to sell it as fact. Can you support this?

And frankly, the thought of the bridge tender sacrificing multiple lives for his own son fills a lot of people with disgust as well.

You say, “To the mind of one who does not believe, the Cross is just plain crazy.” I say that to those of us who have come here for a substantive discussion, you sound like a troll.