Bishop Schori on Evangelism: Let’s Assume for the Moment that She Does Believe that Jesus Is “the” Way

Yet, the language she chose in those recent interviews goes so far as to make me question whether Bishop Schori’s version of “our story” can be squared with the Bible’s.  Perhaps I have gravely misunderstood her recent statements and thus her position.  Perhaps she does believe that Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and humankind.  Perhaps she really meant “yes,” when asked by Time, “Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven?”, but said: 

“We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.”

Perhaps this was a “yes” cleverly veiled in nuance, reflecting a keen understanding of how to speak to unchurched people immersed in a postmodern culture.  When invited in an NPR interview to clarify, perhaps Bishop Schori really was affirming the words of Jesus (John 14:6 and Matthew 11:27), the teachings of Peter (Acts 4:12) and Paul (1 Timothy 2:5 and Romans 3:21-22), and the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles (Article XVIII).  Perhaps she was declaring – only in a welcoming and humble way – that Jesus Christ is the only Lord and Savior of humankind, when she said:

For Christians, we say that our route to God is through Jesus.  That doesn’t mean that a Hindu doesn’t experience God except through Jesus.  It says that Hindus and people of other faith traditions approach God through their own cultural contexts;  they relate to God, they experience God in human relationships, as well as ones that transcend human relationships;  and Christians would say those are our experiences of Jesus, of God through the experience of Jesus.

Perhaps you can find such an affirmation of allegiance to our Lord in Bishop Schori’s recent deconstruction of Jesus’ words, “No one comes to the Father except through me”: 

in its narrow construction, it tends to eliminate other possibilities. In its broader construction, yes, human beings come to relationship with God largely through their experience of holiness in other human beings. Through seeing God at work in other people’s lives. In that sense, yes, I will affirm that statement. But not in the narrow sense, that people can only come to relationship with God through consciously believing in Jesus.

Perhaps what appears to be a tragic lack of clarity on a central tenet of the Christian faith is actually an attempt to employ a nuanced, postmodern evangelistic style.  Perhaps.  Perhaps.  Perhaps.  Only God knows. 

For the moment, let’s assume that the content of Bishop Schori’s version of “our story” accords with “the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3).  That assumption only leads us to another question.

My concern is that God’s story reflects a very specific understanding of the nature of truth, and the Presiding Bishop’s “new language” seems to presuppose a conflicting notion.  The Bible “speaks authoritatively not only on what things are true but on the nature of truth itself” (Douglas Groothuis, Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Postmodernism, p.60, emphasis mine).  The Hebrew Old Testament word for truth, ‘emet, encompasses notions of truth as (1) faithfulness and (2) conformity to fact or reality.  God is true, or faithful, to His word (cf. Psalm 31:5; Is. 45:19), and His people need to “call on him in truth” (Psalm 145:18).  To conform to reality is to “contrast . . . anything which would be erroneous or deceitful” (Truth Decay, p.61).

In several passages “If it is true” means “If the charge is substantiated [i.e., established by proof or competent evidence]” (Deut 13:14; 17:4; Is 43:9).  Many biblical texts include statements such as “speaking the truth” (see Prov 8:7; Jer 9:5) or “giving a true message” (see Dan 10:1) or a “true vision” (see Dan 8:26) (Truth Decay, p.61).

The Greek New Testament word for truth, aletheia, not only shares but emphasizes this notion of “conformity to reality and opposition to lies and errors” (id. at 63). 

John warns of distinguishing the “Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood” (1 Jn 4:6).  Paul says that those who deny the reality of God behind creation “suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Rom 1:18).  Before Pilate, Jesus divided the field into truth and error:  “For this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone on the side of truth listens to me” (Jn 18:37) (Truth Decay, p. 63).

Hence, at the core of “our story,” if we embrace “God’s story,” is a notion of truth that:

is supernaturally grounded, not developed within nature;  . . . objective and not subjective;  . . . a revelation and not a construction;  . . . discovered by inquiry and not elected by a majority vote;  . . . authoritative and not a matter of personal choice (Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind: How should a Christian think? p.107).

In sharp contrast stands the postmodern notion of truth that has influenced, if not overtaken, American culture.  For postmodern thinkers, truth:

is no longer something knowable by anyone who engages in the proper forms of investigation and study.  Truth is not over and above us, something that can be conveyed across cultures and over time.  It is inseparable from our cultural conditioning, our psychology, our race and our gender.  [T]ruth is simply what we, as individuals and as communities, make it to be – and nothing more.  Truth dissolves into a host of disconnected “truths,” all equal to each other but unrelated to one another;  there is no overall, rational scheme of things (Truth Decay, p.20).

While I merely touch the surface here, a more thorough study would confirm that the biblical concept of truth:

collides with postmodernist notions of the social construction of reality and the relativity of truth.  . . .  The Bible does not present truth as a cultural creation of the ancient Jews or the early Christians.  They received truth from the God who speaks truth to his creatures, and they were expected by this God to conform themselves to this truth (id. at 64).

Listening to Bishop Schori’s “new words,” I hear more than a faint suggestion that those words presuppose a postmodern concept of truth.  When the bishop said, “We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine,” did she mean to suggest that there are other vehicles to the divine that are the equal of Jesus?  That people may reject Christ and choose another path to salvation?  How about when she says: 

“For Christians, we say that our route to God is through Jesus.  That doesn’t mean that a Hindu doesn’t experience God except through Jesus.  It says that Hindus and people of other faith traditions approach God through their own cultural contexts.”

This statement even more strongly suggests that God’s truth is not universal, true for all cultures and all times, but is “simply what we, as individuals and as communities, make it to be – and nothing more.”  Is this the truth upon which Bishop Schori would ground “our story”?  If so -- if their “truth” is just as true as our “truth” -- why does Bishop Schori believe we should evangelize at all? 

If not, if Bishop Schori takes Jesus Christ at his word – “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6) – I would hope that she would choose some other “new words” that “reach the unchurched” without sacrificing the heart of His message.  Never would I claim to have discovered absolutely all truths, let alone to have absolutely mastered them.  Nor would I ever claim that any Christian person, church or denomination perfectly practices or embodies the truths they comprehend.  Only an all-knowing, all-seeing God can know and embody absolutely all truth.  But surely we can know something of the truth.  Do not common sense and evidence tell us that some claims are truer than others, however elusive complete knowledge of all truth may be? 

With that understanding, it is difficult to see the arrogance in saying, “The Bible tells us that salvation is through Christ alone, but we, mere created mortals, cannot say for sure how salvation might come to those who pass away without reaching the age of reason or ever hearing the Gospel.”  I think and hope that this approach is true to God’s story, defending the biblical notion of truth as absolute, universal and authoritative, while unashamedly proclaiming Jesus Christ as that truth – without arrogance.