Days of Awe and Wonder: How to Be a Christian in the Twenty-first Century

by Marcus J. Borg

There’s more than one reason I can’t; I mention three. The first reason might be called common sense. When you think about the claim that Christianity is the only way of salvation, it’s a pretty strange notion. Does it make sense that the Creator of the whole world has chosen to be known in only one religious tradition, which just fortunately happens to be our own? Some Christians would make that even narrower, that it’s only their own particular version of the Christian tradition that conveys saving truth. A second reason is that it’s very difficult to reconcile Christian exclusivism with the Christian emphasis on grace. God’s radical grace means God’s unconditional acceptance of all of us. But if one must be a Christian to be in right relationship with God, that’s a requirement. And suddenly we’re talking about requirements, not about grace, about law, not about grace. The third reason I can’t accept the Christian exclusivism of my youth is my experience: my study of other religions and my acquaintance with people of other religious traditions. It now seems clear to me that God, or the sacred, or the Spirit is known in all of the enduring religious traditions and not simply in our own. If I thought I had to believe that Christianity was the only way, I could not be a Christian. Moreover, to turn to the upside of this, it seems to me that seeing the similarities between Christianity and other religions adds to the credibility of Christianity rather than threatening it. Wh...