Days of Awe and Wonder

by Marcus J. Borg

  Third, the religions are very similar in their characteristic practices. Perhaps the most characteristic practices of religion are worship and prayer. Fourth, they’re very similar in the kind of life that results, namely, a life of compassion.

  Does seeing all of these similarities mean that the religions are all basically the same? No, it doesn’t. They are very different. They’re as different as the cultures and histories that shaped them. They’re as different as the cultural-linguistic traditions in which they were born and the cultural-linguistic traditions they became in their own right. Let me speak briefly now about three ways of understanding their similarities and differences using the work of three scholars who have spoken about this. They end up saying very similar things. The first of these is Williams James, in his magnificent book The Varieties of Religious Experience—now one hundred years old.

  By the way, back in 1999 when lists were being compiled of the most important books of the twentieth century, William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience appeared at number two on the list of the one hundred most important nonfiction books, which is very impressive, and it’s still marvelous to read. In his wonderful concluding chapter, one of the richest chapters in religious scholarship that I know of, one of the topics that James deals with is the similarities and differences between religions. He says they are most similar in three of the respects I mentioned earlier. They are most similar in the kinds of experiences reported within each religion, experiences of the sacred, in the practices they enjoin, and in the behavior that results—once again, compassion.

  James goes on to say they are most different in their beliefs and doctrines, in their conceptualizations, if you will. When you think about it, that makes perfect sense, for beliefs and doctrines—that is, concepts that are shaped into religious teachings—are most affected by culture, most reflect the particularities of the culture in which they come into existence.

  The second scholar whose work I want to refer to as an aid in thinking about similarities and differences is René Guénon (1886–1951). In speaking of religion, Guénon makes a distinction between esoteric core and exoteric form. The esoteric, or internal, core of religion is really that experiential core that lies at the heart of each religion. The exoteric form is the external forms of the religions—their scriptures, institutions, beliefs, and so forth. His claim, identical to James’s but using this different language, is that the esoteric core—I think Guénon would even say the mystical core—of each of the major religions is very similar and perhaps identical. It is in their exoteric forms that they differ.

  The third scholar is one I mentioned briefly before: Huston Smith. Huston Smith speaks of the “primordial tradition.” By that phrase he means a tradition going back to the beginnings, I think he’d even say of humanity, but certainly going back to the beginnings of the religious traditions. It’s not only primordial in that it goes back to the beginnings, but also, he argues, because a common understanding underlies all of the enduring religions of the world. Smith finds that there are two elements in this common, underlying understanding. First, there is a multilayered understanding of reality—namely, that in addition to the visible world of our ordinary experience, there are nonmaterial levels of reality. Second, there is also a multilayered understanding of the self—body, mind, soul, spirit. He finds this multilayered understanding of the self to be the conceptual heart of every one of the religious traditions.

  For all of these scholars, then, what the religions share in common is this internal core of experience. Now I want to make two comments about the external forms—the differences. The first of these comments is that these external forms matter. We have a tendency to think that if all religions have this internal core in common, then that’s the point of unification, and if we could just drop the external forms, we’d be a lot better off. One often finds this expressed in the common statement of our time: “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual.” “Religion” here means the institution, the teachings, the tradition, the external form, and it is set in opposition to spirituality, the experiential core.

  I don’t doubt that a person can be spiritual without being religious, but what I want to challenge is the opposition between those two, because it seems to me—and here I’m indebted to Huston Smith—that religion, still meaning the institution, teachings, tradition, and so forth, is the way that spirituality gets traction within history. Religions are to spirituality what schools, colleges, and universities are to education. You can become a self-educated person by avoiding all institutions of higher learning, but it’s really like inventing the wheel every generation.

  So the first way in which I would say the external forms matter is that they are meant to be vehicles of wisdom, vessels through which the Spirit speaks to us and operates within us. A second way in which the external forms matter is when they matter too much. This is the downside, when the external forms are overemphasized; that is, when being Christian or Muslim or Jewish means believing this set of beliefs and not that set of beliefs. When the external forms are emphasized, or made central, then the differences between religions become more apparent than their similarities.

  And when the external forms—the scriptures and doctrines—are absolutized, as they are in religious fundamentalism, then religious exclusivism is the inevitable result. Religious dialogue basically becomes impossible if the external forms are absolutized. Conversion becomes the goal, and conflict is often the result. So the external forms matter, but they matter precisely as relative expressions, as vehicles of the sacred and not as absolutes in themselves.

  Being Christian in an Age of Pluralism

  I turn to part four: the implications of religious pluralism for Christians. Here I will speak very directly about how I as a Christian see this. My first point in this section is the need to reject Christian exclusivism. I’m not pretending this is a dogmatic pronouncement from God—this is how I see it. But I see it strongly this way. What I mean by Christian exclusivism is, I suspect, apparent to all of you. It’s what I, and I suspect many of us in the church, grew up with. Christian exclusivism says Jesus is the only way of salvation, Christianity is the only true religion, and it’s important to convert the world to Christianity, because souls are perishing, lost in shades of night. Christian exclusivism has been part of conventional Christian teaching for centuries. There’s no denying that. I don’t think it’s the authentic voice of the tradition, by the way, but it’s been part of conventional Christianity for centuries.

  Within the Roman Catholic Church, it’s been expressed using the Latin phrase Extra ecclesiam nulla salus est, “Outside of the church there is no salvation.” And, of course, after the Reformation, the Roman Catholic tradition understood that to mean that even Protestants are out of luck—not just non-Christians, but all non-Catholics are out of luck. The Second Vatican Council radically changed that and actually openly affirmed that God is known in all of the religious traditions of the world. The Vatican may be backpedaling on that right now; it’s hard to know what the next few years will disclose.

  Protestants, of course, rejected that Catholic notion—partly because it rejected them—and we Protestants said, “No, there’s salvation outside of the Catholic Church; there’s salvation through Jesus, but only through Jesus, and of course we’ve got Jesus.” So it ended up being the same thing. As I just mentioned, I grew up with this, but I now see things very differently. I can no longer affirm that Christianity is the only way of salvation. 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.

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p; 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. When Christianity claims to be the only true religion, it loses much of its credibility. But when Christianity is seen as one of the great religions of the world, it has great credibility. The similarities, it seems to me, are cause for celebration and not to be resisted. All of that’s my first point on being Christian in an age of pluralism.

  My second point concerns the significance of Jesus for Christians within a pluralistic framework. I want to begin with the relatively few exclusivistic passages in the New Testament. There aren’t very many of them, about three. I’m going to talk about the one that’s most familiar. We must remember, though, that these passages that speak of salvation being only in the name of Jesus reflect the centrality and the utter decisiveness of Jesus in the lives of the early Christians. These statements that Jesus is the only way can be understood as exclamations of devotion flowing out of the experience of having found access to God through Jesus. “Jesus is the way that I have found, and he’s the only way!”

  John Hick, philosopher of religion and theologian at Claremont, suggests we understand this “only way” language as “the poetry of devotion and the hyperbole of the heart.” And I love that, because it honors the genuine devotion and ecstatic sense of deliverance that lies behind those statements. Those statements are a little bit like the language that lovers use for each other, when the lover says to the beloved, “You’re the most beautiful person in the world.” It would be a wooden-headed literalist who, overhearing that, says, “Oh, I don’t know. You know, cute maybe, but the most beautiful person in the world?” That’s the hyperbole of the heart, that’s the poetry of devotion, and it expresses honest, genuine feeling, but whenever one makes doctrine out of hyperbole, one is creating problems.

  Let me turn to that best known of the exclusivistic passages, John 14:6, where, according to John, Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” To a lot of people, that sounds crystal clear: salvation is only through Jesus. But it’s very important to ask about that verse, “What is the way that Jesus is?” Jesus is the incarnation of the way for John, just as he is the incarnation of the Word of God, the incarnation of the wisdom of God. He’s the incarnation of the way, the embodiment of the way—well, what is the way that he embodies? For John, it’s real clear—this is true for the rest of the New Testament too—the way that Jesus embodies is the path of death and resurrection. No one comes to God except by dying to an old way of being and being born into a new way of being, dying to an old identity and being born into a new identity. In this sense, Jesus is the embodiment of the way. If you think it really means you’ve got to know the name of Jesus in order to be saved, then we’re almost talking about salvation by syllables. It’s not about having the right words.

  One of the best exemplifications of the point I’m making right now about John 14:6 is contained in a sermon preached at Boston University School of Theology, a Methodist seminary, in the 1950s, as I recall this story. A Hindu professor was preaching. He was on the faculty, and the lectionary text for the day that his turn came up to preach in chapel was John 14:1–8. He read the text out loud: “Jesus said, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to God but by me.’” Then he looked out at the gathered community and said, “This verse is absolutely true. Jesus is the only way, and that way is known in every religion in the world.” Which is to say, Jesus is the incarnation of the universal truth and universal path, not the incarnation of a unique and exclusive path unknown anywhere else.

  The other point I want to make about Jesus in the context of religious pluralism is the significance of Jesus for Christians—I want to underline the utter centrality of Jesus for us as Christians. I don’t think religious pluralism should make us start talking about Jesus as, you know, one of the lights, or something like that. I don’t think we should water down what we say about Jesus in order to embrace religious diversity. Jesus is constitutive of Christian identity. Christians are people who find the decisive disclosure of God in Jesus, just as Muslims are people who find the decisive disclosure of God in the Qur’an and Jews are people who find the decisive disclosure of God in the Torah—that’s what makes them Christian, Muslim, Jewish. We don’t need to water that down at all. We can say Jesus is for us as Christians the decisive disclosure of God without needing to say that he’s the only disclosure of God. We can say decisive—he’s utterly central for us—without needing to deny the other religions.

  Krister Stendahl, former dean of Harvard Divinity School, bishop of the Church of Sweden, New Testament scholar, and wonderful human being, gave a lecture last year in which, among other things, he talked about religious exclusivism and Jesus. Making a point very similar to the one I’m making, he said, “We can sing our love songs to Jesus with wild abandon without needing to tell dirty stories about other religions.” What he meant by that was we can uphold the centrality of Jesus without dismissing other religions. But there’s a positive point I want to make here: we can sing our love songs to Jesus with wild abandon, even while affirming that God is known in the other religious traditions.

  Then my conclusion, quite brief: Why be Christian in an age of religious pluralism? I want to develop this point by reading to you an e-mail interchange I was involved in about six months ago. This basically friendly e-mail from somebody who’d been reading Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time included this question:

  In your research, you have been exposed to many different cultural traditions about religion and the effects on their followers, yet you say you are still a Christian. Why is that? Is there something about Jesus Christ that makes him different from all of the other religious leaders? Or is Jesus just one among the many of the world’s religious leaders? I’m wondering what you have found unique in Jesus that keeps you in the Christian fold.

  I responded as follows:

  Let me begin by describing how I define “Christian.” It’s very simple. A Christian is one who lives out his or her relationship with God within the framework of the Christian tradition, just as a Jew is one who does that in the Jewish tradition, a Muslim is one who does that in the Islamic tradition, and so forth. I don’t think God cares whether we are Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, and so forth. All our paths of relationship with God are paths of transformation.

  So why, then, am I a Christian? In part, because being part of a religious tradition and religious community is important to me. I’m nourished by it. Though I think one can be in relationship with God apart from religious community, I experience so much richness in religious community that for me not to be part of one would be like refusing a banquet in the midst of hunger.

  And why Christian, rather than Jewish or Buddhist? Not because I can make a case for the superiority of the Christian tradition, but, very simply, because for me the Christian tradition feels like home in a way that no other tradition could, in addition to which I find the Christian tradition extraordinarily rich—its antiquity, its wisdom, its beauty, and at its best its goodness. Finally, I do not see Jesus as unique, except in the sense that the Buddha and Muhammad both ar
e unique—that is, not exactly like anybody else. Rather, I see him as the incarnation of a universal truth that is also known in other traditions—namely, he discloses what God is like and what a life full of God is like.

  Q & A

  STUDENT: I don’t get the transforming thing. It isn’t just learning and trying to be good or like Jesus, Allah, Buddha, or is it? What is this transformation? I don’t have it.

  BORG: I like straightforward questions. I also think it’s on to something really important. The Christian life—or the Buddhist life or the Muslim life, let’s just say the religious life—isn’t about trying to be good. It’s not about trying to be bad, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t about trying to be good. It is about a transformation of the self at a deeper level than that. Goodness is always better than badness, so don’t misunderstand me there, but the notion that the Christian life is about trying to do something—trying to believe, trying to be good—is not the point. It’s about the self at its deepest level. Borrowing from the 12 Steps, the Christian life is about letting go and letting God. That doesn’t give you a recipe for how to do it, but it’s about the transformation of the will and not primarily about the exertion of the conflicted will. And I think that transformation occurs.

  The Christian life is about a relationship with God. If the word “God” sticks in your craw because you’re not sure what I’m talking about, the Christian life is about our relationship to what is. By “what is,” I don’t mean the world of space, time, matter, and energy as understood by science. I mean something that’s more mysterious than that. The way our relationship to God is nourished is through the very simple act, if you will, of paying attention to that relationship—there’s nothing very mysterious about this. The analogy is to a human relationship. A human relationship grows and deepens to the extent that you pay attention to it, that you spend time in it. What we’re talking about here is a transformation of the self that comes about through paying attention to our relationship with God. That can take so many forms. The most common form is prayer, and real close to it is worship, but it can also take the form of dream work, journaling, remembering God in the course of the day. All of that’s involved in paying attention to the relationship. It’s about practice, practice, practice. It’s not about trying to be good—it’s about seeking to become more and more centered in the reality that we name God.