Can Evangelicals Learn From World Religions?

Jesus, Revelation and Religious Traditions

By: Gerald McDermott

Narrated by: David Cochran Heath

Arguably, the church's greatest challenge in the next century will be the problem of the scandal of particularity. More than ever before, Christians will need to explain why they follow Jesus and not the Buddha or Confucius or Krishna or Muhammed. But if, while relating their faith to the faiths, Christians treat non-Christian religions as netherworlds of unmixed darkness, the church's message will be a scandal not of particularity but of arrogant obscurantism.

Recent evangelical introductions to the problem of other religions have built commendably on foundations laid by J. N. D. Anderson and Stephen Neill. Anderson and Neill opened up the "heathen" worlds to the evangelical West, showing that many non-Christians also seek salvation and have personal relationships with their gods. In the last decade Clark Pinnock and John Sanders have argued for an inclusivist understanding of salvation, and Harold Netland has shed new light on the question of truth in the religions. Yet no evangelicals have focused--as nonevangelicals Keith Ward, Diana Eck and Paul Knitter have done--on the revelatory value of truth in non-Christian religions. Anderson and Neill showed that there are limited convergences between Christian and non-Christian traditions, and Pinnock has argued that there might be truths Christians can learn from religious others. But as far as I know, no evangelicals have yet examined the religions in any sort of substantive way for what Christians can learn without sacrificing, as Knitter and John Hick do, the finality of Christ.

This audiobook is the beginning of an evangelical theology of the religions that addresses not the question of salvation but the problem of truth and revelation, and takes seriously the normative claims of other traditions. It explores the biblical propositions that Jesus is the light that enlightens every person (Jn 1:9) and that God has not left Himself without a witness among non-Christian traditions (Acts 14:17). It argues that if Saint Augustine learned from Neo-Platonism to better understand the gospel, if Thomas Aquinas learned from Aristotle to better understand the Scriptures, and if John Calvin learned from Renaissance humanism, perhaps evangelicals may be able to learn from the Buddha--and other great religious thinkers and traditions--things that can help them more clearly understand God's revelation in Christ. It is an introductory word in a conversation that I hope will go much further among evangelicals. (Gerald McDermott, in the introduction to Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions?)

©2000 Gerald McDermott (P)2005 Christian Audio

Critic reviews

"This book makes a solid contribution to the evangelical theology of religions. Leaving aside the issue of the fate of the unevangelized, it leads us to expect to learn from people of other faiths and not suppose that they have nothing to teach us. What a gracious and open spirit this message frees us to have." (Clark H. Pinnock, professor of theology, McMaster Divinity College)

Maybe Christianity isn't the only truth!!

I had to read this book and write a report for a World Religions course for my Masters of Theological Studies. So the author starts by going over general revelation and special revelation. Then, the author posits that maybe all the heads of false religions have received SOME special revelation from God somewhere down the line. The book completely ignores 2 Timothy 3:15-17 which says, "15 and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work."

The book goes even further than ignoring the sufficiency of Scripture. Basically, the book practically asks What if Scripture isn't enough? This book goes out of it's way to find spiritual "TRUTH" in false religions. Completely useless (and even a distraction) to a born-again believer.