This is a sample chapter from my Systematic Theology project "Theology for Thriving". 📎MORE TO THE STORY notes are not part of the main text of the book, but additional resources, charts, or other materials from Biblical Theology class resources.
Acts 17.22-28 [22] “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. [23] For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. [24] The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, [25] nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. [26] From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, [27] so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him— though indeed he is not far from each one of us. [28] For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’
🗝️ Key Concept: Religion
As we journey together in the Ekklesia on our spiritual adventure, what happens when our community encounters another community walking a different path? How do we, as followers of Christ, relate to the billions of people who see God differently, who follow other spiritual maps? This brings us to our key concept: Religion. For our purposes, a religion is a Community rooted in a shared Story, which provides its followers a comprehensive map of reality that answers the great questions of Metaphysics, Cosmogony, Soteriology, Spirituality, and Eschatology.
Let’s briefly map a few of the "Great Religions" to get an idea of what this entails. Religion scholar Stephen Prothero identifies these as spiritual paths that have shaped the lives of millions of people, across thousands of cultures, for hundreds of years, lasting until the present day. The largest and most enduring of these religions include:
Hinduism: The One Divine Self becomes all selves to unite us in the Divine.
Demographics: Originated in the Indus Valley Civilization (c. 2500-1500 BCE). Now there are about 1.2 billion Hindus primarily in India, Nepal, and Mauritius, with diaspora communities around the world.
Metaphysics: Ultimate Reality is Brahman, the impersonal, all-pervading divine ground of Being. Our true self, Atman, is seen as being ultimately one with Brahman.
Cosmogony: The universe is cyclical, an eternal emanation of creation, preservation, and dissolution that overflows from the Divine without a beginning or end.
Soteriology: The problem is Samsara, the endless cycle of rebirth driven by karma (action and its consequences). The solution is Moksha, liberation from this cycle through various paths (yogas) to realize one's union with Brahman.
Eschatology: The ultimate goal is to escape the cycle of reincarnation and have our true self (Atman) merge back into the infinite reality of Brahman.
Spirituality: Key practices include devotion to deities (puja), meditation (dhyana), recitation of mantras to focus the mind, and following the guidance of a spiritual teacher (guru).
Buddhism: The path to awakening and the end of suffering.
Demographics: Originated in northern India (c. 500 BCE). Now there are about 500 million Buddhists, primarily in East, Southeast, and South Asia.
Metaphysics: Ultimate Reality is characterized by Emptiness (Shunyata) and impermanence; nothing possesses a permanent, independent self or soul (Anatman). All things are interconnected in a constant flow of existence.
Cosmogony: The universe is an endless cycle of cause and effect (Dependent Origination) with no ultimate origin point or creator God.
Soteriology: The problem is Suffering (Dukkha), which arises from craving and attachment (Tahna). The solution is the Noble Eightfold Path, a practical guide to ethical conduct, mental discipline, and wisdom that extinguishes craving.
Eschatology: The final goal is Nirvana, the extinguishing of the "fires" of greed, hatred, and delusion, resulting in liberation from suffering and the cycle of rebirth (Samsara).
Spirituality: The core practice is meditation, aimed at achieving mindfulness and wisdom. Also central is devotion to the Three Jewels: The Buddha, his teachings (the Dharma), and the Community of Buddhist practice (the Sangha).
Judaism: A covenant with one God to repair the world.
Demographics: Originated in ancient Near East (c. 1500 BCE). Now there are about 20 million Jews, primarily in Israel and the United States.
Metaphysics: Ultimate Reality is the one God (YHWH), a transcendent yet personal Creator who is singular, just, and acts in history.
Cosmogony: God created the world ex nihilo (out of nothing) as a good gift and called humanity, created in His image, to be its stewards.
Soteriology: The problem is Exile, a spiritual and physical alienation from God. The solution is to live in Covenant with God through observance of the Torah (divine law and guidance) and to help repair the world (Tikkun Olam).
Eschatology: The hope is for a future Messianic Age, which will bring global peace and justice, the restoration of Israel, and the resurrection of the dead.
Spirituality: Life is sanctified through prayer, study of Torah, observance of the Sabbath, and adherence to commandments (mitzvot) that govern daily life.
Islam: Finding peace through submission to the one God.
Demographics: Originated in Arabia (c. 610 CE). Now there are about 1.9 billion Muslims across the globe, with large populations in the Middle East, North Africa, and South/Southeast Asia.
Metaphysics: Ultimate Reality is the one God (Allah), who is absolutely transcendent, merciful, and just. The core principle is Tawhid, the indivisible oneness of God.
Cosmogony: Allah created the universe and all life as a sign of His power and goodness, appointing humanity as His stewards on Earth.
Soteriology: The problem is Pride and forgetfulness of our dependence on God. The solution is Islam (submission) to God's will, which realigns a person with reality.
Eschatology: The final destiny is a literal Day of Judgment, when all souls will be resurrected and judged, leading to either eternal Paradise (Jannah) or Hell (Jahannam).
Spirituality: The core practices are the Five Pillars: the declaration of faith (Shahada), five daily prayers (Salat), charity (Zakat), fasting (Sawm), and pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj).
Secularism: Building a better world through reason, science, and technology.
Demographics: Originated in European Enlightenment (c. 17th-18th Centuries). Now there are about 1.2 billion Agnostics, Atheists, or Non-Religious globally, concentrated in Europe, East Asia, and North America.
Metaphysics: Ultimate Reality is materialism: The physical universe governed by scientific laws. This entails atheism (there is no God) or agnosticism (we are unable to know if there is God).
Cosmogony: The universe began with the Big Bang approximately 14 billion years ago, and life on Earth developed through unguided evolution by natural selection.
Soteriology: The problem is human suffering caused by ignorance, injustice, and natural limitations. The solution is found through human reason, science, and cooperation to build a better world.
Eschatology: There is no personal afterlife. Meaning and legacy are created within this finite life through one's contributions to humanity and the world.
Spirituality: Aesthetic enjoyment of natural beauty and art; Production of technology and power; Consumption of pleasure and possessions; Politics to assert power, shape social systems, and give a sense of group identity.
Now for the question: How can Christianity, with its 2.5 billion adherents, relate to those from the other Great Religions of the world? We start by noting both the vast diversity and shared unity:
On one hand, there are undeniable divergences. Religions disagree on the fundamental human problem, the nature of salvation, and our ultimate destiny. These are not minor details. They are core claims about the nature of reality.
But on the other hand, there are profound convergences: A shared sense of a transcendent and immanent Ultimate Reality, the presence of enlightened figures who embody that reality with Love and compassion, and a universal "Golden Rule" of reciprocity and kindness for all people.
📎MORE TO THE STORY: See a chart on Structural Parallels in World Religions, as well as how Ultimate Reality is viewed in the threefold way across Religions. In particular, see three historical ways that Judaism and Christianity have related to each other.
📖 Scriptural Reflection: Acts 17.22-28
The Apostle Paul's sermon to the philosophers in Athens is a masterclass in theological engagement across religions. He models a posture of curiosity and respect. He begins not by condemning their pagan worship but by finding areas of convergence: He praises their deep religiosity and finds an altar inscribed, "To an unknown god." Paul uses this entry point to name the very God they are already unknowingly searching for. He affirms with them that the Creator of the world is transcendent and "does not live in shrines made by human hands." Then he agrees with them about God's immanence by quoting their own poets: "In God we live and move and have our being... For we too are his offspring."
Then Paul explains their main divergence: God's particular revelation in Jesus Christ. In 17:30-31 he notes that God "commands all people everywhere to repent" because "the world [will be] judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead". Paul shows that the Christian understanding of God does not erase the partial truths found in other cultures. Instead, Christ fulfills what is good and true and beautiful in other religions, just as he fulfills the Hebrew Scriptures and their Hope for the Messiah.
This leads us to the heart of the Christian theological claim, which holds two seemingly contradictory truths in tension. On one hand, there is the centrality and particularity of salvation in Christ. As Jesus himself says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Other Scriptures echo this: "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). This is not an arrogant claim that only one religion is the only way to salvation, but a grateful confession that God has acted through a specific person to embody salvation for the world.
On the other hand, there is the equally strong biblical testimony to the universal scope of Christ’s redemption. The same scriptures that insist on Christ's uniqueness also proclaim that his saving work is for all people. Jesus declares, "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself" (John 12:32). Paul later writes that through Christ, God was pleased "to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven" (Colossians 1:20). This universal hope is rooted in the Hebrew hope that the Living God is the salvation of all nations, and all peoples are beloved by God just as Israel is (cf. Psalm 87; Amos 9.7).
How can followers of Christ navigate these tensions between the centrality of Christ, the universal scope of Christ's salvation, the convergences of world religions, and the divergences? And how can we do this with curiosity, openness, and respect? As Peter told his followers: "In your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect..." (1 Peter 3.15). Historically, sincere followers of Christ have approached this task in three ways: Exclusivism, Pluralism, and Inclusivism.
🔎 How does Exclusivism view religious others?
Exclusivism is the view that only one path leads to Ultimate Reality; all other paths are dead ends. From this perspective, there is only one absolute Truth, and anyone who diverges from it is living a lie. The key analogy is a great chasm, with the one true religion on a safe island and all other false religions on the other side, headed for destruction. There can be no authentic sharing or any middle ground between Christianity and other religions: It is all or nothing.
In this model, Christ saves only those who explicitly and consciously believe the correct set of ideas about him (such as his incarnation, death, and resurrection). Truth is seen as propositional, a collection of facts to be affirmed. While this view rightly focuses on the uniqueness of Christ and can foster a strong sense of Christian conviction, it struggles to account for God's universal Love. It often turns faith into an intellectual exercise and can lead to an aggressive "us vs. them" posture toward the world, failing to recognize the genuine goodness and truth present in other traditions.
This forces us to ask a crucial interpretive question when we read our own scriptures: Which texts get the final say? Do we allow Bible passages that seem to limit salvation to a small, exclusive group to shrink the meaning of the passages that speak of God's universal, all-encompassing love? Or do we allow the universal texts to expand our understanding, showing how Christ’s love fulfills the deepest hopes found in every corner of the human family? It seems that the trajectory of scripture points overwhelmingly toward the latter.
📎MORE TO THE STORY: See a comparison chart on three ways that Christ and Religions relate: Exclusivism, Pluralism, and Inclusivism.
🔎 How does Pluralism view religious others?
This emphasis on the universal Love of God leads some to the opposite pole of Pluralism, the view that many different paths lead to Ultimate Reality. This perspective holds that there is no single absolute Truth, because all truth claims are relative to culture and experience. Thus, all religions are equally "true." The classic analogy is of many paths all leading up the same mountain, with the summit representing union with the Divine. Each path is an equally valid way to get to Ultimate Reality, even if the visions of Ultimate Reality contradict each other, and even if some paths seem harmful or manipulative. All paths are equally valid, and we must tolerate them all.
Here, Christ is seen as one of many great spiritual teachers, and Truth is understood as purely perspectival and relative. While Pluralism rightly emphasizes God's universal Love and facilitates respectful dialogue, it fails to do justice to the particular claims of Christianity and other religions. By declaring all paths equally valid, it ironically erases the real and important differences between them. It provides no clear criteria to judge a religious path as either helpful or harmful. Thus, it can collapse into a vague belief that "all is one," ignoring the profound contradictions between worldviews.
🔎 How does Inclusivism view religious others?
Between these two poles, we find a via media, a middle way: Inclusivism. This is the view that God has fully and definitively revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, yet all the great religions also contain facets of God's truth, and can be genuine paths through which people experience God's grace. The goal here is NOT to say that all religions are the same, BUT that the same God is at work in all of them, drawing people toward the fullness of truth found in Christ. As C.S. Lewis suggested: Just as food can nourish our bodies even if we do not understand how nutrition works, so also the Cosmic Christ nourishes people's souls through diverse spiritual paths, even if they do not know or understand Christ is at work.
In this view, Truth is understood as Personal. It is not a set of propositions to be believed, but a Person to be known: Jesus Christ. Christ is the fulfillment of what is good, true, and beautiful in all other cultures and religions. He brings to explicit completion what is partial or implicit in their own stories. This means Christ can save those who cooperate with his grace even if they do not explicitly know his Name. And just as one can be nourished by food without understanding the science of nutrition, likewise, one can be saved by Christ without having a fully formed Christian theology. People in other traditions can be "anonymous Christians," following the Light of Christ as it is revealed to them in their own context.
A helpful analogy here is the Solar System. The Divine Truth, fully revealed in Christ, is the Sun at the center. The great religions are like planets in different orbits around that Sun, each reflecting the Sun's light in its own way, some closer and some further away, but all held within the same gravitational pull of God's universal love. This model allows us to hold two crucial truths in tension: The particularity of God's definitive revelation in Jesus and the universality of God's saving love for all people. It gives us a firm foundation in Christ, while also calling us to approach other spiritual paths with humility, hospitality, curiosity, and the confident hope that the same God we know in Jesus is already at work among them, even as God is at work in us.
📎MORE TO THE STORY: See a comparison chart on three ways that Christ and Religions relate: Exclusivism, Pluralism, and Inclusivism, along with some Inclusive Christian Symbols. And here is an essay that expands these categories to include "Expansivism".
📚 Topical Scriptures
Here are some Scripture passages which explore and elaborate on the themes of this chapter. As you look them up and study them, think about how they relate to the Key Concept and Guiding Questions.
Genesis 9:12-17
This passage describes the Noahic covenant, established not just with one family or nation, but with "every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." Look for how this reveals a God whose foundational promises and grace extend to the entire created order.
Psalm 87:1-7
This is a radical vision of God's universal city, Zion, where people from traditional enemy nations like Egypt (Rahab) and Babylon are counted as native-born citizens. It shows an expansive hope that all peoples will find their true home in God.
Isaiah 19:19-25
This stunning prophecy envisions a future day when Israel’s traditional enemies, Egypt and Assyria, will worship the LORD alongside them. Notice the radical inclusivity of God's blessing: "Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage."
Isaiah 45:1-6
Here, God calls Cyrus, the pagan king of Persia, "his anointed," a title usually reserved for Israelite kings. This shows God working providentially through a non-believer to achieve divine purposes, even when that person does not know God.
Amos 9:7-12
In this startling passage, God challenges Israel's sense of exceptionalism by comparing their exodus to the migrations of other nations. It reveals a God who is sovereign over and cares for all peoples, not just a single chosen group.
Matthew 2:1-12
The first people to seek out and worship the infant Jesus are not Jewish religious leaders, but Magi: Pagan astrologers from the East. Look for how their journey, guided by a star, suggests that God's revelation is not confined to the boundaries of Israel.
John 10:11-18
Jesus speaks of having "other sheep that do not belong to this fold" whom he must also bring into his flock. This passage points to the universal scope of Christ's saving mission, extending beyond the visible community of his followers.
Acts 14:8-18
Paul explains that even while allowing the nations to go their own ways, God has never left himself without a witness. He points to the universal, natural revelation of God's goodness in creation as a sign of God's care for all people.
Acts 17:16-34
In his address to the Athenian philosophers, Paul finds common ground by referencing their altar "to an unknown god" and quoting their own poets. This models a respectful and curious engagement with another spiritual path, seeking points of connection to introduce the truth of Christ.
1 John 4:7-16
This passage defines God's very essence as love and makes a universal claim: "everyone who loves is born of God and knows God." It suggests that the experience of true, self-giving love, wherever it is found, is a genuine encounter with the divine.
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