Bridges of Understanding with Islam?

"Even a cursory reading of Islam reveals that there are vast areas of agreement between the Islamic view of Allah and the Christian view of God. Both Islam and Christianity affirm the absolute reality of God as the center of everything that is. Islam does not debate the existence of God; it is taken for granted as an undeniable reality. Allah is the creator, the Lord of history and the one to whom everyone must give an account on judgment day. Both Islam and Christianity affirm that God sends prophets, that he calls us to worship him, and that he is the central reality of our existence."

— Timothy C. Tennent,Christianity at the Religious Roundtable:Evangelicalism in Conversation With Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2002), p. 152

Can We answer why Jesus?

"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 Muhammad. 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."

Gerald R. McDermott, Can Evangelicals Learn From World Religions? Jesus, Revelation, and Religious Traditions(Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2000), p. 10

Salvation among the Nations-God's Great grace!

"A fundamental point in this theology of religions is the conviction that God's redemptive work in Jesus Christ was intended to benefit the whole world. ...The dimensions are deep and wide. God's grace is not niggardly or partial. ...For according to the Gospel of Christ, the outcome of salvation will be large and generous."

Clark Pinnock, A Wideness in God's Mercy:The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1992), p. 17
(Pinnock is arguing that there is evidence of many being saved not 'Few" as many fundamentalists argue)

The Challenge facing us Through Postmodernism (& Pluralism)

This sentiment is very relevant to us today. Half of the people sitting in our pews really believe this deep down inside. How do we respond, and keep missions passion?

"How can you tell but that the Turks had as good Scriptures to prove their Mahomet the Saviour, as we have to prove our Jesus is; and could I think that so many ten thousands in so many Countries and Kingdoms, should be without the knowledge of the right way to Heaven... and that we only, who live but in a corner of the Earth, should alone be blessed therewith? Everyone doth think his own Religion rightest, both Jews, and Moors, and Pagans; and how if all our Faith, and Christ, and Scriptures, should be but a thinks-so too?"

(John Bunyan,Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners,ed. Robert Sharrock(New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 31)

A further Examples of pluralism's emerging.

"The needed Copernican revolution in theology involves an equally radical
transformation in our conception of the universe of faiths and the place of our
own religion within it. It involves a shift from the dogma that Christianity is
at the center to the realization that it is God who is at the center, and that
all the religions of mankind, including our own, serve and revolve around
him."

(John Hick,The Second Christianity,3rd enl. ed. of Christianity at the Centre(London: SCM Press, 1983), p. 82)

"Christians, in their approach to persons of other faiths, need not insist that Jesus brings God's definitive, normative revelation. A confessional approach is a possible and preferred alternative. In encountering other religions, Christians can confess and witness to what they have experienced and come to know in Christ, and how they believe this truth can make a difference in the lives of all peoples, without making any judgments whether this revelation surpasses or fulfills other religions. In other words, the question concerning Jesus' finality or normativity can remain an open question."

(Paul F. Knitter,No Other Name?A Critical Survey of Christian AttitudesToward the World Religions(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1985), p. 205)

"A theology of world religions that wants to be true to the empirical situation
in the way the religious traditions confront each other must not evade or play
down the conflict of truth claims. If we look to the history of religions in the
past, there was always competition and struggle for superiority on the basis of
different truth claims."

(Wolfhart Pannenberg,"Religious Pluralism and Conflicting Truth Claims,"in Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered,ed. by Gavin D'Costa(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1990), p. 103

New dynamics - We Rub Shoulders With People of Many Religions!

"Other faiths used to belong to other lands. At home,rival religious claims could safely be ignored. Or, if not ignored, patronized. The superiority of one's own faith was so evident that the alternatives could somehow be brought within its purview without posing any real theological or social threat. Today things are different. Different faiths are practiced cheek by jowl in most parts of the world."

(John Habgood, Archbishop of York,Preface to Many Mansions:Interfaith and Religious Tolerance,ed. Dan Cohn-Sherbok(London: Bellew Publishing, 1992), p. vii)

Real Dialogue With Other Religions Requires People Who really Believe their Religion. - Pluralisms Problem

Just Say No to Pluralism
"First, we must not succumb to the forces of religious pluralism that seek to bring to the table of dialogue a version of Christianity that has been robbed of its distinctiveness.’ For too long interreligious dialogue has been advanced and identified with a pluralist agenda that open seeks to accommodate other world religions by discarding distinctive Christian doctrines such as the incarnation and the resurrection of Christ. The result, as Mister McGrath observes, is that “it is not Christianity that is being related to other world faiths; it is little more than a parody and caricature of this living faith, grounded in the presuppositions and agenda of western liberalism rather than in the self revelation of God.’ Pluralism seeks to censure all truth claims as imperialistic, dogmatic, and divisive. Our desire to avoid such nasty labels has caused us all too often to avoid the table of dialogue and by our silence to acquiesce to the idea that all religions are fundamentally the same.
True interreligious dialogue acknowledges that all religions in one way or another seek to defend certain truth claims. It is not fair to any religion to allow it to be ensnared in the swamp of religious pluralism, which concludes that we are all saying the same thing…….

As I stated in chapter 1, a Muslim who earnestly desires the entire world to acknowledge that “there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his Prophet” does not of fend me, Indeed, I fully expect it and do not believe he would be a trustworthy representative of Islam if he said that such a confession did not really matter or that Christians and Muslims were really no different from each other,
This is why it is so important that the table of dialogue brings together actual adherents of the various faiths and not just those who are masking their postmodern notions of truth behind religious language."

(Timothy C. Tennent, Christianity at the Religious Round Table: Evangelicalism in Conversation with Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. Grand Rapids, Baker Academic, 2002. p. 239,240.)

Indian Legend says there are 330 million gods in Hinduism?

“Indian lore contains a well-known tale about a Hindu man who spent his entire life as a kind of theistic census taker. He went from village to village, house to house, occupation to occupation, caste to caste, inquiring at every location about which deities were worshipped at that place by those people. After traveling throughout India and recording the names of all the deities who were worshipped, tradition states that he chronicled the list in a great book. The number is traditionally held to have been 330 million. When the weary traveler finally returned to his home village, exhausted and in his ninety-third year, he was asked to count how many gods were in his book, He spent seven years counting the gods, and at the end of the book he wrote the grand total—one. He declared in his dying breath that there is “one God worshipped in India.”

The author goes on to make this Missiological claim.

"This story symbolizes the classic problem concerning Hindu theism, and it is the reason why the Western assumption that Hindus are polytheistic is not as simple as the observations of a casual visitor to India might indicate. On the one hand, popular Hinduism seems to have no end to gods and goddesses who are worshipped and adored. On the other hand, India is known throughout the world for its intricate and sublime philosophy that teaches there is only one ultimate reality."

(Timothy C. Tennent, Christianity at the Religious Round Table: Evangelicalism in Conversation with Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. Grand Rapids, Baker Academic, 2002. p. 38.)

Inter-religious Dialogue, Pluralisms & their affect on Missions!

I Have been Studying the Theology of Religious Pluralism. I assure you this quote is a real issue.

"I confess that although I have read dozens of books on interreligious dialogue, I have enjoyed precious few of them. Yet I am now in the curious position of writing such a book. Upon reflection, the basic reason for my dissatisfaction is that the average Christian would hardly recognize the Christianity that is often presented in such works. Certainly, the apostles— the eye- and ear-witnesses of Christ’s life and the first to testify about him— would go away scratching their heads in bewilderment. The Christian gospel is often presented as one among many different paths to God. Christianity is ranked side by side with religions such as Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism in much the same way as films are displayed at a multiplex cinema. The Islamic Qur’an or the Hindu Upanishads are as likely to yield spiritual light as the Sermon on the Mount.

I do not believe that the authors of such books distort the gospel message intentionally or maliciously. Rather, most of them simply do not affirm the historic Christian confessions; yet curiously they continue to identify them selves as Christians. Even scholars among the non-Christian religions have begun to recognize this phenomenon. For example, Grace Burford, a practicing Buddhist scholar, comments on this in a recent Buddhist-Christian dialogue titled Buddhists Talk about Jesus—Christians Talk about the Buddha. Her chapter is insightfully titled, `If the Buddha Is So Great, Why Are These People Christians?’ She bluntly asks about these scholars, If they were so taken by Buddhism, why did they hang on to Christianity… Why would people be prepared to surrender every central claim of historic Christianity and yet be so doggedly determined to remain spokespersons for Christianity?”

(Timothy C. Tennent, Christianity at the Religious Round Table: Evangelicalism in Conversation with Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. Grand Rapids, Baker Academic, 2002. p. 9,10.)