Here is a small sample of the some thoughts I've been developing for the past two years or so. I've been planning to write a treatise or book covering this and other subjects and have even begun doing so several times. But it's going to take a lot more time and study to write a book that adequately defends many of these positions, and in the meantime, I thought I'd put some of the basic ideas online for public discussion. After all, if there's any truth to these theories, it was true before I stumbled upon it.
I'm writing tonight about the concept of universalism in the the gospels. Not the "everyone gets saved" kind of universalism, because anyone who's ever read the gospels knows that isn't there, but rather a universalism which posits that people can attain salvation and access God by multiple--even infinite--paths.
A Christian's first reaction is likely that this sort of universalism isn't present in the gopsels either. Of Jesus' countless statements on salvation, a mere two verses form the bedrock of a complex theology on the subject. The first is John 3:16, the most famous verse of the Bible ("that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.") The second, found in John 14:6, is Jesus statement that "I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me." In politics, these might be termed "bumper-sticker phrases": short, succinct statements that sound good but mask the deeper complexities of an issue. Beyond these, the Christian theology of salvation comes largely from letters by Paul and James.
This is a drastic oversight on the part of theologeons, as Jesus has plenty more to say on the subject. Contrary to the above statements, Jesus' lengthier teachings on salvation pertain not to acknowledging his divinity but to the cultivation of certain actions and values, values demonstrated by practitioners of many religious faiths: forgiveness, generosity, kindness, humility, pacifism, and the rejection of extreme wealth.
In terms of emphasis theme of forgiveness alone trumps acknowledging Jesus' divinity in his own teachings on salvation. Jesus says that those who forgive will be forgiven (Matthew 5:7) and that each person will be judged by the standard he or she uses to judge others (7:1). In the Lord's Prayer, he asks God to "forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors--" then he interrupts himself, in the middle of the prayer, to emphasize that "if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins" (Matt. 6:12-14.) Nowhere does he stipulate that this forgiveness is only open to those who acknowledge his divinity.
Jesus' longest and most emphatic teaching on heaven and hell (Matt. 25:31-46) describes him returning at the end of the age to “separate the people from one another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats” (25:32). Here, Jesus states that those who find favor with God are those who have fed the hungry, welcomed strangers, clothed the poor, looked after the sick, and visited those in prison. The "goats" are those who ignored those in need. Mainstream Christian doctrine seems to mandate the presence of a third group: those who fed the hungry and clothed the poor but whose incorrect beliefs keep them out of heaven. This category is conspicuously absent from Jesus' account.
(The other traits I mentioned above, especially rejection of wealth, take up a fair amount of Jesus' focus as well, but I fear this "basic ideas" essay is becoming overlong.)
So how do we recognize these numerous and emphatic passages with the John verses where Jesus talks about being the Way and the necessity of belief? Assuming that these are all statements Jesus actually made (biblical errancy is the subject of a much longer, more studied, more boring essay) and postulating that Jesus' statements are valid to begin with (or this becomes an exercise in futility,) we have to seek an interpretation that balances and fairly represents all the concepts at play.
Since mainstream Christianity has done this dissatisfactoraly, emphasizing a few specific quotations over four books' worth of teachings, I propose a method that calls into question our understanding of the word "believes." What does it mean to believe in someone, and what does it mean to believe in Jesus specifically? The traditional understanding is that belief in Jesus means belief in Jesus' divinity, sacrificial death, and resurrection. But Jesus was talking about salvation long before his death, and "I'm the incarnation of God" comprised only a very small portion of his message. So what would happen if we defined "belief" in Jesus as belief in the worldview he spent 95% of his ministry constructing?
Here's a hypothetical question. We have on one hand a person who has never heard of Karl Marx but who, through indirect exposure to Marx's teachings, has come to assume a philosophy that mirrors Marx's in every meaningful way. On the otherhand is a person who calls himself a Marxist and talks about Marx's writing frequently, but who espouses capitalism, rejects the materialist dialectic, embraces the hierarchy of the traditional family structure, and supports organized religion. Which of these could be more accurately be called a Marxist?
I'm sure you know where I'm going with the example. Here's the parallel: someone, maybe a deist or a Hindu or an agnostic or a UU, who forgives the wrongs done to her, embraces the maxim of "living simply so others may simply live," and invests her life in humanitarian causes that improve the quality of life for disadvantaged people. This person lives the major teachings of Jesus about as well as any can, but--perhaps due to the gross representation of his message by so many Christians--never feels inclined to consider the Christian faith. Contrast this woman with one of those very misrepresentations--a clergyman who uses his station to molest children; a televangelist who exploits gullible people for money; a politician who wields the Bible to defend war, racism, and the concentration of wealth.
Who can more accurately be called a follower of Jesus? I find that it's often not the person bandying his name. And Jesus' own message, taken wholly, vindicates that.
It's funny and sad to me that as exclusive a religion as Christianity descended from one as accomodating as Judaism, which offers the Noahide laws, a specific set of instructions for how people outside the religion can find favor with God. The church understanding of salvation is among the many rigidities the faith has inherited, a product of being intertwined with the state for centuries. Our narrow understanding of Christianity as promising salvation only to those who have been exposed to and acknowledge a certain narrative is the same kind of crowd-control religion that we see in beliefs like the infallibility of the Pope. Those who believe in God need to use their God-given faculties, rather than the artifacts of Roman rule, to inform their opinions about him. God is in everything around us--after all, it's his creation.
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