a meditation to inspire better meditations
In Britain and elsewhere in order to achieve good community relations in cities and towns the Christian Church seems often to be ready to minimise its message and to leave out of it the distinctive content, the cutting edge.
Judaism, Christianity & Islam agree that God's purpose for man as his Creator is:
1. That his distinctive role in the order of creation is to develop his spiritual faculties of intellect, will and love , and cause his bodily nature to reflect God's glory.
2. That his spirituality is fulfilled only in self-conscious communion with God, which is the supreme glory & final end of his existence.
3. That this communion is to be everlasting for he is created for immortality wherein alone his potentialities can be realized.
4. That his noblest activity is adoration and praise of God wherein he fulfils his own nature as being that of a creature made in the image and after the likeness of God.
To these four propositions Christians very importantly and necessarily add:
That God's purpose for every man is that he should become like Christ, by being united with Christ Jesus through the Holy Spirit in the relation to God the Father.
This is to say that what distinguishes Christianity from other religions is the belief that the Creator became man in one, specific figure in history. Let us unpack this assertion.
"The one, totally new thing which Christianity brought into the world was the belief, hammered out over the first four-and-a-half centuries of its existence, that in Jesus of Nazareth the true and living God had been living a genuine human life.
Other religions had gods walk the earth incognito, or had proclaimed the divinisation of some hero or sage. Christianity alone took a historical person and said, 'Here in this human personality, with all the limitations and sufferings of our human condition, was the eternal God, the Cause and Origin of all that is.' As defined in all its classical rigour (in the definitions of the Ecumenical Councils) this is the unique feature of the Christian religion, its only valid claim to separate existence.
A God of goodness, a Creator who cares, Christianity shares with Judaism and philosophical theism. A man who truly reflects the nature of the divine is no new thing to the Hindu or the Baha'i. A divinely inspired prophet, even one miraculously born, is acceptable to Islam. The Spirit of God indwelling men and guiding and strengthening their lives is a religious commonplace. Divine food received in a sacramental meal is Zoroastrian; ritual washings and initiation rites are found universally. Islam holds fast to judgment, heaven and hell; Judaism to repentance, amendment, and God's merciful pardon.
At every point accommodation is possible save at this one: this unique claim about Jesus, with its undergirding in the doctrine of the Holy, Blessed and Undivided Trinity. If this goes then the end of Christianity as an independent entity cannot be indefinitely delayed. No Incarnation, No Christianity."
Obviously this message has to be proclaimed graciously and set in the context of good works which glorify God. But if it is left out for fear of offending then while community relations may improve (questionably) the march of Islam especially will continue unabated for Muslims have learned how to use human rights, government subsidies and liberal and nominal Christianity to press ahead with their expansion.
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon
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