Tag Archive for: reductionism

Exclusivity of Christian faith has its origins in the monotheism of the First Commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me” (Ex 20:3).  Exclusivity in truth and knowledge claims seems to appear early among human beings. Along with proto-scientific claims regarding truth and error, revelation claims implied truth from a sole divine origin as against all rival “revelations” (cf., the extraordinary work by Jan Assmann, “The Price of Monotheism”, 2009). There are varying degrees of exclusivity. The move from having no other gods to there being no other gods was a massive intensification of the original revelation claim.

Any truth claim carries with it an element of exclusivity. But not all truth claims are equal. I have suggested often to my students that they consider a simple but useful three tiered hermeneutic:

1-      Physical rationality sufficient for comprehending the natural environment

2-      Interpersonal rationality sufficient for comprehending the human environment

3-      Doxological rationality sufficient for comprehending the Creator / creature environment

For human reasoning, rationality is practiced in order to identify and to relate. Rationality works to achieve epistemic integration and everything that might promote and protect life in the world and its destiny. At some point collective wisdom could be fairly certain when some things are nearly invariably so and not so. Rationality tests knowledge claims. Knowledge claims which stand up under multiple tests by many human observers over time achieve a kind of exclusivity against rival claims. Much of the success of the scientific method is based upon such critical processes.  But the knower has to guard against reductionism in reasoning. Reductionism happens whenever higher forms of rationality are “reduced” to lower forms for comprehending the merely the physical environment.  As complex as the physical environment is, the interpersonal cannot be reduced to the physical neither can the doxological to the interpersonal.

In any theological method worth its salt, truth claims are at a premium. But even the would-be-theologian has to remember that doxological rationality is irreducible to physical rationality as well as interpersonal rationality. All three levels of knowing are operative together but no more than as overlapping epistemic domains. The exclusivity of Christian truth claims are those which are not shared by any other faith.

Exclusivity claims can be sullied from the get-go by ulterior motives. Ulterior motives are present, for instance, wherever an official religion is established for the purpose of enhancing political authority. Political interests undermine doxological reasoning just they do to ethics, to science and to every other realm of culture. Whenever the state officially sanctions a religion it thereby creates a very pressing problem of a false exclusivity. Exclusivity in Christianity arises solely from its understanding of God’s claims upon humanity, not from human authorities. Government elevation of a church or other religious body in a “superior” position to all others places an unbearable burden upon  its members that actually tends to undermine the Christian faith itself. The Gospel makes exclusive claims for all Christian churches; no other source of Christian exclusivity exists.

“Exclusivity” can be lined up next to other terms that Christians have used to indicate ultimate truth claims. Modern apologetists have defended Christianity as “absolute” according to developmental theories of religion. Christianity stands at the apex of cultural evolution as an achievement both of divine providence and the design inherent within natural processes. According to Christian philosophies of history (e.g., salvation histories, dispensationalisms,  covenantal theologies)  humanity was destined to transmit Christian faith as an idea or ideal to itself and to its world. There are echoes here of the two great NT authors, John, with his “the whole world could not contain the books” which could be written about Jesus (Jo 21:25); and Paul, with his “in him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Co 2:3). Most important to evangelicals along with Catholic and Orthodox, is a locus classicus: “there is no other name…by which we must be saved” (Ac 4:12). Christian Scripture makes a doubly exclusive claim, that there is no other heaven and that there is no other means of entrance. Although there is no agreement regarding which institution of the church holds or can hold exclusive claim to possess the gospel in its fullness, there is this exclusive claim associated with Jesus. A modification of the patristic sensibility is worth mentioning here:  “extra christum nulla sallus”: salvation is impossible outside of Christ (rather than the formula “outside of the church…”). But in a very real sense, absoluteness is a more apt term than exclusivity.

If exclusivity or absoluteness in Christian faith is focused upon salvation in Jesus Christ, then there is also the requirement of acknowledging that there are differing views of the afterlife in the world of religions. Christianity presents an extension of the exclusive Abrahamic hope on account of the sole mediation of Christ for humanity. From a Reformational perspective, in addition to the “five solas” mentioned in the previous contribution, one could add a sixth: “sola veritas”, “truth alone” – meaning, not found elsewhere. This is the salvific truth immediately before us. While the Bible is often presuming truth agreements with its many non-Jewish, non-Christian interlocutors, saving truth is exclusive to the gospel’s claims about Christ. The Johannine “ego eimi”, “Iam” passages, which quote the first person of the Lord in his direct speech, includes “the way, the truth and the life…no one comes to the Father except through me” (Jo 14:5). This statement of both exclusive relation to God and to salvation could not be clearer or more universal. The whole world, after all, is the object of God’s saving love through Christ (3:16).

Exclusivity claims can be profound hindrances to Christian faith: they can be mistaken for insider knowledge that is valuable only to a particular community or individual. In other expressions, exclusivity can be obscure, even esoteric and require initiation before anything can be understood, let alone appreciated (the gnostic danger in the term). This is where one might speak (inaccurately) of “mystery” in Christian faith. Although mysterion is a key Pauline term (cf., Ep 3:1-7), it is not meant to convey something which is impenetrably “mysterious”, or “mystifying”, something known only to initiates and “supra-rational” or “non-rational”, acquired, e.g., through ecstatic experience. “The mystery of the world” is that God was reconciling it to himself in Christ crucified and risen (2 Co 5:19). What we know is that this divine exclusivity claim has its effect upon everyone who responds to the gospel in faith. What we as Christians individually and in the churches think we can make out of this exclusivity other than to proclaim it is not so self-evident.