REGARDING SALVATION THROUGH GOD IN CHRIST ALONE

God revealed in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is necessary and sufficient for salvation.

 And while the core story is told in the mythological terms of ancient Palestine, it bespeaks a contest with Death encountered as an existential threat to human meaning, value, and purpose. A contest that is won through God in Christ’s absorbing the onslaught of Death and rising victorious from it. The other forms of contesting the threat of Death, most notably through wielding power, escapism, or appeasement are all variations of human sacrifice as well as tacit acknowledgement of Death’s mastery. And that is why participating in the reality of God in Christ is NECESSARY.

 If that sounds radical, than the SUFFICIENCY of God in Jesus Christ for salvation is more so.

 Salvation is NOT to be found in God in Jesus Christ AND some pious nonsense about the inerrancy of the Bible. Salvation is NOT to be found in God in Jesus Christ AND the acceptance of an infallible Church.

 And salvation is not to be found by God in Jesus Christ AND an exclusive interpretation of such salvation within the confines of Christianity.

 There is NO REASON IN PRINCIPLE why a Jew, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Marxist, an atheist, a humanist OR ANY OTHER religion or ideology cannot avail themselves of salvation through God in Christ EVEN IF they do not conceptualize such salvation in Christian terms.

 To be blunt: a Christian of ANY variety has no advantage over other Christians nor over Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics or atheists simply because they speak in the Christian language.

 Christians speaking in that language have used it as a club to beat others, both figuratively and literally, in a way that suggests they are very far from genuine encounter with God in Christ.

 And others, not knowing Christ BY NAME, nonetheless evidence a freedom to love that, by my reckoning, can ONLY come through an encounter, an acceptance, and a sharing of that reality that I know through God in Christ as authoritatively (though not inerrantly) witnessed to in the Bible and faithfully (though not infallibly) witnessed to in the broad center of the Christian tradition.

 The gospel of God in Christ is capable of expression in ANY culture, whether it be the ancient cultures of the Middle East or the post-Enlightenment, secular cultures of the 21st century West.

For the gospel of God in Christ is radically free and not hostage to any historically conditioned worldview, ideology, or system of ethics - not even Christian worldviews or ethics of a particular period.