Christ is The Way

Acts 4:10;12 (NIV)

10 then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed.

12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

The testimony of Peter and John about the death of Jesus Christ, His resurrection, and the salvation He brought to save mankind.

"I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me." I [Dale Bruner] had a personal, yet very public experience with this text not long ago. I was giving Bible studies in the morning at a week-long Lutheran pastors' conference, and Dr. Prasanna Kumari, a lovely Asian-Indian woman, was giving the evening platform addresses. Dr. Kumari is the president of the Lutheran Church in India and was (I believe) the executive director of the Theological Commission of the Lutheran World Federation. She is a very impressive woman.

In the mornings, I was teaching John, chapter 1, for all I was worth. The theme, as it is everywhere in John's Gospel, is the exclusivity of Christ. (One thinks, for example, of John 1:18: "No one has ever seen God before, but God the only Son, who is at the very heart of the Father, he has explained God.") In the evenings, Dr. Kumari was teaching that, indeed, Christ is the way for the Christian. But, she added, in India a sincere Hindu could also go to God, and Buddhists could find their way to God too. The ordinary way of salvation is sincere devotion to one's own religious tradition; the extraordinary way of salvation is Jesus Christ. As long as people are sincere, they can get to God or to saving truth as they understand it.

Dr. Kumari and I were going in two different directions!

It is bad form at a conference for one speaker to contradict another. All week long I wrestled with this inclusive/exclusive issue. This is the conclusion I came to and shared with the conference on the last morning:

In the past, when asked what my theological position was, I have described myself as a Christocentrist, but I now realize that that is not an adequate answer. I am a Christoexclusivist! Dr. Kumari is absolutely Christ-centered. She loves the Lord Jesus Christ—no questions about it. But I have come to realize this week that, for me, Christ is not only the center—he is the circumference. He is the only way to the responsible knowledge of, or participation in, saving truth. Christ is exclusive.

[Dale Bruner, Theology, News and Notes of Fuller Seminary (October 1999), pp.3-4]