Questions for understanding any Christian denominational problems, part II

          "* Are biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus accurate? Did this happen?

"* Is salvation found through Jesus, alone? Was Jesus being literal when he said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

"* Is sex outside of marriage a sin?" 

       -Original source article can be found here. 

Yesterday, I began the first in a short series on reporter Terry Mattingly's "tMatt Trio" of questions that he often used when reporting on religious stories when he was trying to uncover and accurately report on denominational conflict or general religion stories involving Christian bodies. You can read my first reflection here.  

Looking today at his second question is also an interesting interrogative: Is salvation through Jesus, alone? In most talks I have heard of him discussing this, he simply leaves it at that. The second part of the question that I quoted from his article, he elaborates on the quote from the Gospel which is in the background of the question, but one an interviewer does not necessarily have to say out loud specifically. 

This is an excellent question also to elicit discussion because this will uncover a lot of information about where a church is in terms of inter-faith ecumenism/dialogue, universalism, and indifferentism. Traditionally, most of Christianity has historically been exclusive about how salvation works in that it is through Jesus. It was not okay to burn a little incense to the so-called divine Caesar. It was no okay to eat meat sacrificed to idols. It was even not okay to play musical instruments in worship in some places in the early church because musical instruments were associated with pagan worship.

Even how to incorporate pre-Christian Greco-Roman philosophy was a major controversy in the early Church. Some like Tertuillian believed the Church should have nothing to do with pagan philosophy, going so far as to say it was all the "mumblings of Satan." Others of the early Church fathers were on a bit of a spectrum as to how much to adopt of pagan philosophy. Some were okay with some parts of it, but rejecting other parts. Some were pretty much fine with adopts and abrogating pagan philosophy wholesale as long as it was not clearly and utterly contrary to Church teaching and the Bible. Some even went so far as to label a few of the later pre-Christian Roman philosophers as "proto-saints"-clearly convinced that had they lived in the time of Christ, they would have adopted Christianity. 

So, fast forward to more recent times and the downfall of Christendom, the time when people were all presumed Christian. As Christianity no longer has the default place of privilege in most Western countries, more and more religious pluralism has arisen. Jews, Muslims, Wiccans, Buddhists, nones, Atheists all exist aplenty in most areas. How does the Church view the salvation of such people who openly reject Christ?

A side bar running through the background of this discussion is the very notion of hell itself. Does hell even exist, and if it does, does a loving and merciful God ever send anything there? If people do go to hell, is it indeed eternal? Many a church or religious body had gotten to the place of rejecting the idea of hell, or at least minimizing the concept to the place where only the worst of humanity, the Hitlers and Polpots of the world are ever consigned. Surely, many people would say nowadays, hell is just a metaphor of some kind or does not actually exist, or if it does, surely God would never send any "good person" to hell...be he or she a Buddhist, an atheist, a Jew...whomever. God would surely never judge someone into eternal damnation. God surely is more akin to Santa Claus, bringing good things to all the boys and girls.

As you can probably guess, there are different ways theologically of addressing this question of "is salvation found through Christ alone?" Certainly many liberal Protestant denominations who have gone away from any belief in hell or judgment have no real problem with saying that basically everyone goes to heaven. Maybe it's through Christ's love because "love wins." Maybe it is from a theology of a more secular philosophy of indifferentism: that it does not really matter what you believe because all belief ultimately leads you to God. As long as you are trying to be a good -insert religious belief system here-, everybody gets a free pass to heaven. 

So, one can see in a theological environment such as that, that conflict can arise from a number of internal fronts. If everyone goes to heaven, why did Jesus have to die? Is the Resurrection really meaningless at the end of the day? If there is no judgment, is there really any moral standards that anyone is accountable for? Can you believe anything and God has nothing to say about it? Can you violate the commandments? People can argue over all sorts of things of this nature inside a Church body over issues stemming from these theological issues.