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Who Really is Jesus Christ for Us Today?

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 Who Really is Jesus Christ for Us Today?

Reuben M. Bredenhof
rm.bredenhof@gmail.com
www.reubenbredenhof.com

Introduction – The Central Question

Perhaps about no figure in the history of humanity have so many loaded questions been
asked than about Jesus Christ. Well into his ministry, Jesus himself asked his disciples what the
masses thought of him: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” (Matt 16:13).1 The answers
were various, and evidently wrong, for Jesus then asks his disciples what their view was: “But
what about you? Who do you say I am?” (Matt 16:15). And Peter replies for them all, “You are
the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16). But even this answer was not saying enough,
for what does it mean to be Christ? This particular question Jesus aims later at the Pharisees:
“What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” (Matt 22:42).
Who was Jesus? Who is Jesus today, or what has he become? What is his importance for
the Christian church? What is his importance for humankind? How does he compare with the
founders – intentional or not – of other religions? These questions imply that the figure of Jesus
Christ has undergone change throughout the centuries, evolving from Jesus to Christ, and
perhaps from Jesus Christ to something else again. The manner in which people meet Jesus
Christ has not been static, but rather, dynamic. Encounters with Jesus in many different contexts
can be experienced: in the context of personal history, Scripture, the creeds of the church, world
history, contemporary scholarship, and so on. This constant process of change in the view of
Jesus Christ then leads us to a central question: Who really is Jesus Christ for us today?
Since the time of Jesus, this central question has continued to be asked. For instance, it
was asked by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in letters to his friend Eberhard Bethge. As Bonhoeffer sat in
prison, incarcerated by the Nazis for opposing Hitler and the policies and practices of the Third
Reich, he pondered the vapid state of the Christianity of his day. In this spirit he wrote to Bethge
on April 30, 1944, “The thing that keeps coming back to me is, what is Christianity, and indeed
what is Christ, for us today?”2 Bonhoeffer’s historical context, when it seemed the true practice
of religion had all but disappeared, led him to seriously question the place that Jesus Christ and

1
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New International Version (1973).
 2

Christianity could have in such a world. The situation since Bonhoeffer’s time has changed, of
course, which means the same question needs to be asked and answered anew.

A Subsidiary Question
An important subsidiary question to our leading question concerns the peculiarity of
Jesus. That is, was he unique as the person Jesus? Was he unique in being hailed as Christ? And
was there anything that set his life and mission apart from others who have come in the name of
God? Considering this subsidiary question of Jesus’s historical or theological uniqueness
determines in large part how we will answer who Jesus Christ is for us today. For if Jesus was
not unique, some might quickly conclude that he can be relegated to the periphery of history and
religion. Again, if he was not unique, the contribution of his life and teachings probably do not
amount to much that cannot be found elsewhere. On the other hand, if Jesus was unique, and if
he offered a distinctive way to God, we ought to give the question of his importance today
careful consideration.
In this paper, we will examine the question of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ from a
number of angles. We will first look at Jesus as a human being – specifically a Jewish man – and
examine what kind of Jew he was. Next, we will consider the theological import of Jesus as
Christ, as compared to other saviour figures that have appeared or been put forward through the
centuries. We will then evaluate Jesus Christ among the other founders of religions, and,
concomitantly, Christianity among the other religions. Drawing out our conclusions from this
material, we will return to the central question of who really Jesus Christ is today.

The Historical Question of Uniqueness: Jesus the Human Being

As we consider the particularity of Jesus Christ, it is fitting that we return to the most
basic level of his existence: Jesus as a human being, a person of flesh and blood who walked on
the same earth on which we walk, about 2000 years ago. And when we examine the earthly life
of Jesus of Nazareth, before he became anything else – either in reality, or in the judgment of
others – we must grapple with the reality that he was a Jew. This is perhaps an obvious fact, yet

2
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (London: SCM Press, 1953), 91.
 3

it must be emphasized, for many have neglected this fact entirely, sometimes with tragic
consequence.3 “Jesus was deeply Jewish,” says Marcus Borg, that is,
Not only was he Jewish by birth and socialization, but he remained a Jew all of his life.
His Scripture was the Jewish Bible. He did not intend to establish a new religion, but saw
himself as having a mission within Judaism. He spoke as a Jew to other Jews. His early
followers were Jewish. All the authors of the New Testament…were Jewish.4

Whatever else he was, Jesus of Nazareth was not “other-worldly.” He was a Jew, a member of a
particular people and culture, in a particular time and place. And as the above quotation
indicates, in this reality the majority of his early followers continued.
So what kind of Jew was Jesus? As a Jew, was he unique or out of the ordinary? Much
attention has been paid to this matter, with scholarly opinions ranging widely from the viewpoint
that Jesus was a radical and renegade within Judaism, to the view that Jesus generally conformed
closely to the standards of first century Judaism.5 Assuming that historically reliable information
can be extracted from the New Testament Gospels, we can firmly place Jesus in the setting of
first century Judaism. He was born, grew up, and spent the years of his ministry in the land of the
Jews. Further, “His message was essentially Jewish,” and even on many controversial issues, “he
voiced the opinion of the Pharisees.”6 Also as a healer and exorcist, Jesus largely conformed to
the pattern of previous and contemporary Jewish healers and exorcists, though he was not a
professional in this regard as others were.7 Even in his practice of forgiving sin, Jesus was not
unusual, for “absolution from the guilt of wrong-doing appears to have been part and parcel of
the charismatic style” that Jesus adopted in his ministry.8 Though conforming in many ways to
standard Jewish behaviours, Jesus was singled out for persecution because of the purportedly –
but misunderstood – revolutionary propaganda that came from his lips; the Saduccean rulers
sought to silence this “dangerous” Galilean in the interest of general peace.9 Thus it was actually

3
Cf. Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus & the Heart of Contemporary
Faith (San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1994), 22; Borg points out how many Christians today are (apparently) often
unaware of the Jewishness of Jesus, or even see Jesus and the Christian movement as anti-Jewish.
4
Borg, Meeting Jesus, 22.
5
Cf. the book of essays devoted to this question, Jesus’ Jewishness: Exploring the Place of Jesus within Early
Judaism, ed. James Charlesworth (New York, NY: Crossroad Publishing, 1996).
6
Geza Vermes, “Jesus the Jew,” in Jesus’ Jewishness, 113.
7
Vermes, “Jesus the Jew,” 115; Vermes observes how Jesus did not use incantations, foul-smelling substances, or
smoke as other Jewish exorcists did.
8
Vermes, “Jesus the Jew,” 117.
9
Vermes, “Jesus the Jew,” 119-120.
 4

a misunderstanding of his purpose that set Jesus the Jew uncomfortably apart from his
contemporaries, a distinction that ultimately led to his demise.
According to the Gospel-writers, Jesus the Jew understood himself not as a revolutionary
but especially as a rabbi. In this regard, Bruce Chilton judges that Jesus the rabbi was a failure;
he did not stand out because of any great life accomplishment: “Rabbi Jesus…fell short of
making a lasting mark within Judaism. Dead at thirty, he had not yet framed his mishnah, the
formally crafted public teaching that a rabbi typically transmitted to his students by around the
age of forty.”10 Jesus made important and enduring contributions,11 but this was in spite of the
weighty fact that,
The rabbi from Nazareth never claimed he was unique. His Abba was the Abba of all. His
teaching, purifying, exorcism, healing, prayers, signs, meals, and sacrifices were not for
himself alone, nor were they intended to demonstrate his personal power or bring him
adulation for his attributes or accomplishments. All his work was undertaken to open the
gate of heaven so that Israel might enter before the Throne of God.12

To some of these observations we will return later, suffice it to say that in these conclusions
Jesus is again seen to be no innovator within Judaism, but one who viewed himself – and was
generally viewed by many – as a faithful Jew among Jews.
However, as a faithful Jew, Jesus was still marked by a level of superiority. He may have
resembled the Hasidim in some ways,13 though this is not to say that “he was simply one of them
and nothing more.”14 To the thoughtful among his contemporaries, Jesus surely stood out as
being incomparable in some important respects: “Second to none in profundity of insight and
grandeur of character, he was…an unsurpassed master of the art of laying bare the inmost core of
spiritual truth and of bringing every issue back to the essence of religion, the existential
relationship of man and man, and man and God.”15 He also differed from his contemporaries
and prophetic forbears for he not only spoke on behalf of the poor and oppressed, he identified

10
Bruce Chilton, Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2000), 291.
11
Chilton observes well that “the events of his life, his public teaching, and his kabbalah gave rise to distinctive,
emotionally resonant rituals such as baptism, prayer, anointing the sick, and the Eucharist,” while Jesus himself has
become “a measure of how much we dare to see and feel the divine in our lives” (Ibid., 291).
12
Chilton, Rabbi Jesus, 292.
13
Vermes, “Jesus the Jew,” 118.
14
Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1973), 223.
15
Vermes, Jesus, 224.
 5

with them, and “took his stand among the pariahs of his world.”16 This set Jesus as prophet and
servant of God apart from other Jews who claimed such titles.
And while we have seen that Jesus was in many respects a conventional Jew and an
unspectacular rabbi, here we also must consider his messianic claims. To be sure, whether he lay
claim to the Jewish messianic role has been a matter of dispute. Vermes’s statement is typical of
those who are dubious of Jesus’s messianic consciousness: “None of the claims and aspirations
of Jesus can be said definitely to associate him with the role of Messiah.”17 This viewpoint is
countered by scholars such as Marinus De Jonge, who point out well the plausibility of Jesus’s
own messianic consciousness.18 De Jonge demonstrates how Jesus’s claim to messiahship seems
to have formed the basis for the charge against him before Pilate. He also observes that it is
unlikely that Jesus would have allowed his opponents to press the title on him as they did,
especially at his trial, for he could easily have pointed out how he had resisted the title
throughout his ministry. Furthermore, Mark already in his gospel (generally accepted to be the
earliest Gospel) used the term “messiah” with reference to Jesus. Finally, the importance of the
term in early Christianity suggests that it must have been grounded it what Jesus had said about
himself. It is beyond the scope of this paper to examine in depth this question of Jesus’s
messianic consciousness. However, it can be said that even if Jesus did claim to be the promised
Messiah, this still does not mean he was unique within Judaism, as the messianic hope was
central to the religion to which he was an adherent. His uniqueness can be determined only by
the degree to which he conformed to those expectations.

Conclusions
We have seen that as a first-century Jew, Jesus in some respects did not stand far apart
from others. In religious and cultural observances, he was usually a conformist. However, when
it came to his personal conduct and his ministry among his contemporaries, he was certainly
distinct. Vermes sketches this dichotomy for us,

16
Vermes, Jesus, 224.
17
Vermes, Jesus, 223. The general notion of this statement is found replicated in the conclusions of many writers;
cf., e.g., Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus, who claims, “We have no way of knowing whether Jesus thought of himself
as the Messiah…. in some special sense” (28); cf. also Reginald Fuller’s observations in The Foundations of New
Testament Christology (London: Collins, 1965), 109-111.
18
Marinus De Jonge, Christology in Context: The Earliest Christian Response to Jesus (Philadelphia, PA:
Westminster Press, 1988), 208-221.
 6

The positive and constant testimony of the earliest Gospel tradition…leads not to a Jesus
as unrecognizable within the framework of Judaism as by the standard of his own
verifiable words and intentions, but to another figure: Jesus the just man, the zaddik,
Jesus the helper and healer, Jesus the teacher and leader, venerated by his intimates and
less committed admirers alike as a prophet, lord and son of God.19

In short, while he was Jewish to the core, in presentation and conduct Jesus was more than just
another face in the Jewish crowd.
However, who Jesus was as a human being and as a Jew is just one small aspect of his
story. If his time on earth was the last that we heard of Jesus, there would not be much more to
say; though his character and insight and compassion may have been remarkable, though he may
have made messianic claims – all these would soon have been forgotten. But it is what happened
after Jesus of Nazareth walked on earth that we must consider next.

The Theological Question of Uniqueness: Jesus the Christ

We have already discussed Jesus’s messianic self-consciousness; how his followers later
interpreted what Jesus said in this regard is another matter entirely.20 Again, the question of the
authenticity of some of his statements in the Gospels in this regard has to be left aside for now.
What is clear is that Jesus was hailed as the Messiah by his followers. Bonhoeffer aptly
summarizes this view of Jesus as Christ:
In Jesus of Nazareth, his revealer, God inclines to the sinner; Jesus seeks the
companionship of the sinner, goes after him or her in boundless love. He wants to be
where a human person is no longer anything. The meaning of the life of Jesus is the
demonstration of this divine will for sinners, for those who are unworthy. Where Jesus is,
there is the love of God.21

Indeed, as Peter had confessed already in Matthew 16, Jesus is the Christ. And while “Christ”
now has overtly Christian connotations, we note that “Christ” is merely the Greek form of the
Hebrew word “messiah.” This Hebrew word is now well-established in the English language,
and not just as a specialized Judeo-Christian religious term. Today a “messiah” is considered a

19
Vermes, Jesus, 225.
20
Vermes, Jesus, says with some vehemence: “His adherents transformed this love and worshiper of his Father in
heaven into an object of worship himself, a god; and…attributed to Jesus himself Christian beliefs and dogmas,
many of which…would have filled this Galilean hasid with stupefaction, anger, and deepest grief” (120).
21
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. Robert Coles. Modern Spiritual Masters Series (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books, 1998), 46.
 7

“(would-be) liberator of [an] oppressed people or country.”22 Into this mold of messiah, Jesus
was fitted.
Yet the general currency of the term “messiah” already indicates to us that the
phenomenon of a “Christ” figure or “saviour” figure is not unique in itself. That is, Jesus is not
(or was not) the only “Christ” or messiah. Even before the historical appearance of Jesus of
Nazareth in the land of Palestine, there were many persons who had been hailed as, or who had
claimed to be, deliverers of one sort or another. This particular truth is illustrated well in the
seminal study of Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries.23 Particularly his chapter
entitled “The Light of the Gentiles” clearly shows how a messianic hope has been held in many
cultures, for many centuries. To such hopes we will now turn our attention.

Jesus in Other Cultures

Many peoples in many contexts have expected their deliverance to be effected by a
special figure who would soon appear. But rather than being viewed as different expectations of
a different saviour, these messianic hopes historically have been interpreted by some Christians
as being met in none other than the historical Jesus of Nazareth. In the view of some in the early
church, “Jesus represented the divine answer to a question that had been asked everywhere, the
divine fulfillment of an aspiration that was universal.”24 The same view is espoused by the great
Christian humanist Erasmus in his dialogue entitled “The Devout Banquet,” where one of the
participants observes about some pre-Christian authors,
I find among the ancients…the heathen…[and] among the poets, certain precepts and
sentences so clean, so sincere, so divine, that I cannot persuade myself but that they wrote
them by holy inspiration. And perhaps the spirit of Christ diffuses itself further than we
imagine.25

This somewhat typical Christian view is that divine truth was not restricted to a certain people
(i.e., the people of Israel), but was given to the people of more nations. Included in this divine
truth revealed by “the Spirit of Christ” are not only moral precepts, but also messianic
expectations.

22
The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 6th edition, ed. J.B. Sykes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976).
23
New Haven, NY: Yale University Press, 1985.
24
Pelikan, Jesus, 34.
25
Desiderius Erasmus, “The Living Tradition: The Devout Banquet,” Hibbert Journal 61 (1963), 138.
 8

Pelikan finds that there have traditionally been three methods of finding Jesus Christ in
the messianic expectations of the non-Jewish and non-Christian religions. First, people have
examined non-Jewish prophecies for indicators of the coming Christ. Second, some have seen
Gentile anticipations of the doctrine about Christ in some of the writings of the philosophers.
And third, people have found in various works of pagan literature purported evidence of the
foreshadowing of Christ, and so have discovered “types” of the salvation that was achieved by
Jesus on the cross.26
Important to the legitimacy of the first method – Christ prophesied by “non-traditional”
prophets – is acceptance of the notion that true prophecy is not an exclusive possession of the
Jews, and not solely the domain of such Israelite and Biblical figures as Isaiah, Jeremiah and
Ezekiel. After all, there were Old Testament figures like Jethro and Balaam who were Gentiles,
yet who were able to speak of God’s will in manner similar to the many Jewish prophets;
“Armed with such biblical warrant, Christian apologists found in Gentile literature…evidence of
messianic prophecy that pointed forward to Jesus.”27
One dramatic non-Jewish prophecy of this kind was said to be the Fourth Eclogue of the
Roman poet Virgil. In this work, the poet spoke at length of how the birth of a child would usher
in a golden age, altering even nature itself. This ancient composition was often appealed to by
Christian writers in order to prove the universality of Jesus Christ, even before he had been
born.28 That Virgil referred in this work to the Greco-Roman prophetess Cuma, the Cumean
Sibyl, also gave rise to the later Christian practice of putting new (or altered) oracles in mouths
of the Sibyl. Such “pagan” oracles further prophesied of such Christian topics as Jesus as the Son
of God, or of the judgment that he was soon to bring upon the earth.29
The second method of finding Jesus Christ in Gentile cultures was to look for ways in
which Christian doctrines were anticipated in Gentile thought. Illustrative of this, Erasmus had
one of the conversation partners in “The Devout Banquet” conclude after some noble words of
Cicero on the temporary nature of human existence relative to eternal life: “What could a

26
Pelikan, Jesus, 35.
27
Pelikan, Jesus, 35.
28
Because of the historical importance of Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue to the study of Jesus Christ, we will consider it in
more detail in an excursus after this section on “Jesus in Other Cultures.”
29
See, e.g., Constantine’s Oration to the Saints, 18, in which he finds in the Sibyl a poem whose first letters spelled
the Greek words, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour, cross.”
 9

Christian have said more?”30 The common view was that “all philosophers before the coming of
Christ were in some way already anticipating Christianity, and Christ was already, albeit in
hidden ways, at work in the philosophers.”31 Such early Christian fathers as Clement of
Alexandria read Greek literature widely and used that knowledge in tandem with a dedication to
Jesus as divine Tutor. Here enthusiasm about Jesus is “combined with a Platonism in which the
Son is the highest excellence, most perfect, holy, powerful, princely, regal and beneficent.”32 In
Clement’s view, philosophy was a good preparation for Christian theology, “a tutor to bring the
Hellenic mind to Christ.”33 This pedagogical role of philosophy was said to be particularly
evident in Plato’s Timaeus, which described how the creation of the world had been
accomplished and how there were three levels of divine reality – seen to be clearly suggestive of
the Christian doctrine of the Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The anticipatory nature of Greek philosophy was judged to be perhaps best displayed in
Plato’s Republic. Within this work, Clement found a prophecy that “all but predicts the history of
salvation.”34 In the passage in question, Socrates and Glaucon are discussing righteousness and
unrighteousness; Glaucon suggests that while humans are both righteous and (mostly)
unrighteous, there could theoretically be someone who is entirely unrighteous, and someone who
is entirely righteous. Now imagine that the truly righteous man, Glaucon invites Socrates, be
accused of being the worst of humankind. Though accused of being unrighteous, imagine that
this righteous man still remain steadfast in his noble convictions. This would result in a terrible
and gruesome fate, says Glaucon; “[He] will be scourged, tortured and imprisoned, his eyes will
be put out, and after enduring every humiliation he will be crucified.”35 Here too, in the
judgment of Clement, was a clear prophecy of the coming of Jesus the Christ, who was perfectly
righteous yet who was accused of, and also condemned for, being wholly unrighteous.
Finally, early Christians discovered Jesus Christ in the persons and events of classical
literature, which they interpreted as “types” and prefigurings of Jesus and the salvation he

30
Erasmus, The Living Tradition, 139. Again, a little further in the dialogue, it is said: “Never any heathen came
nearer to the Christian faith than Socrates in his words to Crito, before he took the poison: ‘Whether I shall be
approved or not in the sight of God I cannot tell; but this I am certain of, that I have most affectionately endeavoured
to please him. And I am in good hope that he will the will for the deed” (139).
31
Peter Simpson, “The Christianity of Philosophy,” First Things 113 (2001), 33.
32
Pelikan, Jesus, 39.
33
Pelikan, Jesus, 39; quoting from Clement of Alexandria’s Stromata, 1.5.
34
Pelikan, Jesus, 44.
35
Plato, Republic, 2.360-361.
 10

accomplished.36 The apologist Justin Martyr, for example, schooled from a young age in Greek
philosophy, drew upon Plato’s Timaeus when presenting the arguments for Jesus Christ to
Antoninus Pius, the Roman emperor. At that time, Justin said that the cross was the greatest
symbol of the power and rule of Jesus, and that it was reflected already in what Plato had said
about the creation of the universe; namely, that the Demiurge “had split the soul-stuff into two
halves and made the two cross one another at their centres in the form of the letter Chi.”37 To
Justin it was patent that the ancient philosopher was simply misunderstanding Moses,
particularly in the passage where Moses described how a brass snake “in the form of a cross”38
had delivered the people of Israel in the wilderness from death – which itself was an anticipation
of the saving cross of Jesus Christ (cf. John 3:14-16).
Another well-known episode in Gentile literature that was said to anticipate the saving
cross of Jesus Christ was the binding of Odysseus to the mast of his ship in Homer’s Odyssey. In
this account, Odysseus relates the divine Circe’s instructions to his companions: “You must tie
me hard in hurtful bonds, to hold me fast in position upright against the mast.”39 Both aspects of
this episode, that the companions had to stop up their ears against the alluring call of the Sirens,
and that they had to tie Odysseus to the mast so that only he would hear the Sirens’ call and
triumph over it, was applied by early Christian writers to the faith and lives of Christians:
They were to avoid sin and error, ‘as we would a dangerous headland, or the threatening
Charybdis, or the mythic Sirens’ … and they could do this because of Jesus…the
Christian Odysseus: ‘Tied to the wood [of the cross], you shall be freed from destruction.
The Logos of God will be your pilot.’40

This Homeric type of Christ was appealed to by later Christians as well, surfacing regularly in
Biblical commentaries and in Christian art.
When claiming that these various writings and episodes were prophetic of Jesus Christ in
one way or another, the Christian fathers were confronted with the thorny matter of how these
Gentile authors came to know the gospel-truths that they disseminated. Justin Martyr, as we saw

36
“‘A type,’ according to the definition of Origen of Alexandria in the third century, ‘is a figure that came before us
in the [Old Testament] fathers, but is fulfilled in us’” (Pelikan, Jesus, 41).
37
Pelikan, Jesus, 42; quoting from Justin Martyr’s Second Apology, 60.
38
Cf. Num 21:8-9.
39
Homer, Odyssey, 12.219-221.
40
Pelikan, Jesus, 43; quoting from Clement of Alexandria’s Exhortation to the Greeks, 12.118.4.
 11

already, said Plato and others had simply borrowed from Moses and the Jewish prophets.41 For
this explanation however, there was a lack of evidence; it was unclear – and actually rather
doubtful – whether other peoples had any knowledge of the Hebrew Bible.42 Thus the Gentiles’
knowledge of such messianic matters was also explained by the presence of the divine Logos
who had been in the world from the beginning, distributed by the divine Sower, with the result
that “there seem to be seeds of truth among all men.”43 These “seeds of truth” were found in
many of the ancient Gentile writers and their works. Clement of Alexandria attempts to
demonstrate this in his Stromata, quoting a multitude of pagan authors, and pointing out how
their words replicate, synthesize or anticipate sayings and truths that are found in the Christian
scriptures.44 As Justin Martyr put it, “For all the [pagan] writers were able to see realities darkly
through the sowing of the implanted seed that was in them.”45 Through this seed, some of the
church fathers concluded, there could even be “Christians before Christ.”46

Excursus: Messianic Expectation in Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue

As mentioned above, some early Christian writers claimed that pre-Christian pagan
authors were capable of prophesying the coming of Jesus Christ. The example of these claims
par excellence is repeatedly found in connection with the Roman author Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue.
As Habicht says well, looking back on two millennia of use, “No other piece of lyrical poetry has
been treated (and mistreated) as often as this poem of 63 lines.”47
The work under attention is a part of the Ten Eclogues, or pastoral poems. These poems
were written by the Roman poet Virgil, hailed as the greatest of all Roman poets. He wrote it
around 40 B.C.E., after an agreement was made at Brindisi between Antony and Octavian which

41
Cf. the comments of John Stott, The Incomparable Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 81. We
observe that the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) had fairly wide currency in the Greco-
Roman world, but this was particularly in the communities of the Jewish Diaspora.
42
Simpson, Philosophy, 34.
43
Stott, Incomparable, 82; quoting from Justin Martyr’s First Apology, 44. Cf. also Justin’s Second Apology, 46;
speaking of Christ, he says, “He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived
reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists.”
44
See Clement of Alexandria’s Stromata, 5.11-14.
45
Justin Martyr, Second Apology, 13.
46
Stott, Incomparable, 82.
47
Christian Habicht, “Messianic Elements in the Prechristian Greco-Roman World,” in Toward the Millennium:
Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco, eds. Peter Schäfer and Mark Cohen. Studies in the History of
Religions 77 (Brill: Boston, 1998), 50.
 12

seemed to establish a new peace in the Roman empire.48 The empire had been enduring a time
of instability, and seemed to be hurtling toward a destructive civil war. That a truce was finally
reached seemed to signal the coming of better things. A key part of this truce was a marriage that
bound the two acrimonious sides, a marriage between Antony and Octavian’s sister Ocatavius. It
was from this marriage that a son and heir to the empire was expected; this is likely the awaited
son who is at the centre of the poem.49 About this child many sublime things are predicated.
Virgil says that this anticipated son would be the offspring of Jupiter (49); furthermore, because
of his birth, sins would be wiped out (3), and the last age would be initiated (4); this last Golden
age would be a time of peace (17) in which noble animals will become harmless (22) and
poisonous snakes and plants will disappear (24). At the end of the work, the boy is born (60).
To understand the Fourth Eclogue, before any other claims about it can be made, the
work must be placed within its cultural, historical and literary context. Crossan describes some
key aspects of this context,
Virgil, combining magnificently musical poetry with consummately political propaganda,
moved…to give Octavius and his Julian heritage a mythological genealogy worthy of the
new Roman order. He went back for inspiration to the only possible source, to Homer –
the “bible”…of Greco-Roman paganism.50

As it turned out, however, the awaited son was never born. The uncertainty in the Roman empire
continued for a while longer, until such time as Octavian had consolidated his power by gaining
absolute control over all the lands that were under Roman subjection.
The (temporary) historical disappointment that met this prophecy certainly did not deter
many Christians in later years from seizing upon it.51 In short, they claimed that the Fourth
Eclogue pointed to none other than Jesus Christ of Nazareth, he who was said to be born of

48
Stephen Benko, “Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue in Christian Interpretation,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen
Welt 31.1 (New York, NY: Walter De Gruyter, 1980), provides a careful review of the historical background of the
Fourth Eclogue (647-653).
49
The identity of the expected son is a matter of dispute; some say it was the son of Pollio, who was instrumental in
bring the pact about; others say it was a son for Octavian; still others that it was a son for Antony and Octavius, as
noted above; others yet say the prophecy does not intend to refer to a real person at all, but to an idealized figure
around whom the empire would rally.
50
John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1994), 3.
51
See the long history of Christian interpretation recounted in Habicht, “Messianic Elements,” 670-687. Cf. the
summary of Augustine’s views on Virgil’s work in Carl P.E. Springer, “Augustine on Virgil: The Poet as Mendax
Vates,” Studia Patristica, vol. 22, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone. (Leuven: Peeters Press, 1989), 337-343;
interestingly, Augustine regarded Virgil as a mendax vates, “a lying prophet.” “In other words, he knows the truth
but for the sake of expediency refuses to express it explicitly” (340). Augustine was not alone in expressing
 13

woman and God, sent to take away sins and to introduce a new age of peace. Furthermore, the
affinities between the Fourth Eclogue and such Hebrew Bible passages as Isaiah 7:14-15 and
9:6-7 were often demonstrated.52 No less prominent a Christian figure than the emperor
Constantine dabbled in the interpretation of the Fourth Eclogue, in his Oration to the Saints. Of
the terms in which Virgil speaks of the coming saviour figure, Constantine asserts, “It may be
[that] some will foolishly suppose that these words were spoken of the birth of a mere ordinary
mortal…[yet] the very joy the elements indicates the advent of God, not the conception of a
human being.”53 It was this understanding of the Fourth Eclogue “as [an] announcement of the
birth of Christ that contributed to make the poem look like messianic prophecy.”54 Indeed,
The fourth eclogue was accessible and attractive to Christian apologists for several
reasons: it was beautifully, conveniently mysterious…it referred to the Sibyl, whose
prophecies, in large part Jewish and Christian forgeries, the Christians so triumphantly
adduced; and above all, it proposed to imagination a new birth of time with a child, a
virgin, and a perfected Edenic world.55

In the minds of some Christian thinkers, the Fourth Eclogue became yet another resounding
prophecy about Jesus of Nazareth, of the same stripe as the majestic oracles of the great Hebrew
seers.
Unsurprisingly, classical and Biblical scholars have come to reject any Christian
interpretation of the Fourth Eclogue as implausible.56 While later Christians would say that the
age in which Virgil lived “was pregnant with Christ,” that is, “full of ideas and expectations
which we now consider typically Christian,” this is a partisan view of history.57 “The hope for a
reestablishment of the paradisiacal state of the universe is as typically Roman as it is Jewish or
Christian…Virgil did not have to turn outside the framework of his own religious experience to
compose the Fourth Eclogue because all the main ideas of it were already present and at his

reservations about the nature of Virgil’s “prophecy;” Jerome is said to have regarded the Christian interpretation of
it as puerile.
52
Benko, “Christian Interpretation,” nicely summarizes all the biblical ideas said to be represented in the Fourth
Eclogue (662-668); he cites such concepts as: the end of time, the virgin birth, the removal of sin, world peace,
restoration of perfect harmony; he also finds within it many hints at specific biblical texts.
53
Constantine, Oration to the Saints, 21.
54
Habicht, “Messianic Elements,” 53.
55
Wendell Clausen, “Virgil’s Messianic Eclogue,” in Poetry and Prophecy: The Beginnings of a Literary Tradition,
ed. James L. Kugel (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 72.
56
It has been said that “If Virgil had accurately predicted the birth of Christ…it may fairly be doubted whether he
would have done any good by it;” further, Virgil “would have been completely irrelevant to his reading audience,
would have made no impact upon the Christian movement and he would be remembered merely as someone who
successfully predicted a future event” (Benko, “Christian Interpretation,” 687).
 14

disposal.”58 In view of this healthy dose of realism, alternate theories for the origin and also
importance of the Fourth Eclogue have since been proffered.59

“Christ” in Other Cultures

We turn now from supposed anticipations of Jesus of Nazareth, to more general
anticipations of (a) Christ. As mentioned earlier in this paper, messianic expectations are far
from uncommon. However, it should be pointed out that “a messiah in the full sense of the world
is not to be found in the Greco-Roman world” because “ointment, an important (maybe even
essential) feature of the Messiah, is never mentioned.”60 Still, saviours and “messianic figures”
are found.61 Such saviours were generally gods, and their beneficiaries were individuals, or
groups or persons, or states. In time, mortals came to be hailed also as saviours; the first recorded
Greco-Roman case occurred during the Pelopennesian War, in 422 B.C., when the Spartan
general Brasidas was honoured as such.62 This trend continued with some humans being
acclaimed as saviour of all humanity. However, they were not expected figures, like the Jewish
Messiah was, but they are present among the people, “recognized for what they are, not
announced for what they might become one day.”63
While some people have found Jesus himself reflected in the “Christ expectations” of
other cultures, and other people have simply seen “messianic elements” in other cultures, still
others have concluded that the Christian Jesus Christ is actually only a poor imitation of some of
these expectations. Tom Harpur, in The Pagan Christ draws this conclusion from his survey of
ancient evidence.64 He makes the startling claim, “There is irrefutable proof that not one single
doctrine, rite, tenet, or usage in Christianity was in reality a fresh contribution to the world of
religion.”65 Harpur relies heavily on the findings of the scholar Alvin Boyd Kuhn, who
discovered that several centuries before Christianity, the Egyptians (and also other peoples)
believed in and awaited the coming of a messiah, a Madonna and her child, a virgin birth, and

57
Benko, “Christian Interpretation,” 701.
58
Benko, “Christian Interpretation,” 701.
59
Clausen, “Messianic Eclogue,” notes a twentieth century interpretation that seeks a basis for the Fourth Eclogue
in Eastern pagan theology and ritual (73-74).
60
Habicht, “Messianic Elements,” 47.
61
Habich, “Messianic Elements,” 47: “Real persons reported as having inaugurated a new and better order, or ideal
persons expected to come and to do so in the future.”
62
Habicht, “Messianic Elements,” 47.
63
Habicht, “Messianic Elements,” 47.
64
New York, NY: Walker and Company, 2004.
 15

the incarnation of the spirit in flesh. It is said that the early church seized upon these ancient
beliefs as the core truths of Christianity, but the church’s leaders chose to disavow their pagan
origins. Harpur claims that what began as a universal belief system founded on myth and
allegory became instead a ritualistic institution lead by ultraconservative literalists. Thus, “the
Christian faith took a fatally wrong turn in the third century when religious leaders took great
myths and disseminated them as literal historical events…What evolved as orthodox Christianity
was built upon lies, distortion, and form of plagiarism on a scale scarcely imaginable.”66
In light of his research and conclusions, Harpur pleads for a careful deconstruction of the
Christian doctrine, arguing that it be seen as what it really is: myth. Yet calling it myth is not to
say that the Christian faith system must be jettisoned like so much refuse. For Harpur, the core
message of Christianity is the very truth that it shares with other monotheistic religions: that
every human being incarnates a spark of divinity that lends sanctity to individuality; as Harpur
states about this spark of divinity, “It belongs to all, regardless of ethnicity, colour or clime.” 67
In this sense, says he, Christianity and its founder must be re-mythologized, not de-
mythologized, as so many have sought to do. Approaching Jesus Christ and the New Testament
record in this way, we can learn better how the reality of the “Christ within” can operate
internally today.68

Conclusions
As we consider the theological uniqueness of Jesus Christ and the various attempts to
“find” him – whether as a type or prototype, whether directly prophesied or obliquely alluded to
– in times and cultures other than his own, let us briefly take stock of the conclusions that people
have reached in this search.
On the one hand, some Christians have tried to prove that Jesus Christ was not unique, so
that the church’s teaching about him would be more palatable to those who had not (yet)
accepted the church’s message. After sifting through the evidence, such people claimed to have
found that Jesus Christ is far from being particular to the Jewish prophetic tradition alone, and so
they concluded to their pagan listeners that he must be the way of salvation that is open for all

65
Harpur, Pagan Christ, 10.
66
Harpure, Pagan Christ, 2.
67
Harpur, Pagan Christ, 183.
68
Harpur summarizes his view of the spiritual Christ; e.g., “Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection are subjective
events of the Christ within that each of us is meant to experience” (25).
 16

people, Jewish (or Christian) or not. In their eyes, Jesus Christ of Nazareth was often predicted,
and finally fulfilled at one time and place in history. On the other hand, some others have also
claimed to have proven on the basis of the evidence that Jesus Christ was not unique in his
position as saviour. Thus they have concluded that Jesus of Nazareth must not be the sole way of
salvation, but rather only one salvific option among many.
So where do these differing conclusions leave us, as far as the uniqueness of Jesus Christ
is concerned? Clearly, such conclusions leave the matter decidedly unsettled. Unsettled, firstly
because there can be a good amount of dubiousness about the efforts of church fathers such as
Clement of Alexandria to find in the Gentile literature various foreshadowings of Christ.
Logically, methodologically, and historically, there are major difficulties with the way Christians
have tried to find Jesus Christ in pre-Christian times. Here we cannot examine these difficulties
at length, suffice it to say that the alleged connections pointed out between ancient events and
pagan literature and Christ are tenuous at best. At the same time, conclusions like those reached
by modern authors such as Tom Harpur are certainly not beyond dispute either. And once again,
we cannot deal extensively with each case of alleged borrowing. Rather, we want to keep
seeking a different terminus altogether: Who Jesus Christ really is for us today?
Pursuing this goal, we keep in mind one fact that has been demonstrated as beyond
dispute, namely, that for centuries there has been a messianic expectation, a hope for deliverance
(whether temporary or permanent) from evil or oppression. We have seen that such expectation
has often been focused on one central figure who has been gifted in extraordinary ways. This
expectation has been found in many cultures; for example: Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Jewish and
Christian. Keeping this central truth of universal messianic expectation at the fore, let us now
move to our last major section, concerning whether Jesus Christ stands apart from other religions
in terms of what he offers to humankind.

The Religious Question of Uniqueness: Jesus the Christ

The Context of Pluralism

As our awareness of the other nations and peoples of the world increases through steady
advances in communication, travel and the exchange of information, we also discover that there
is much religious diversity on this planet. As Charles Davis writes axiomatically, “Religious
 17

faith in the concrete exists only as multiform.”69 While largely taken for granted today, this
realization came as a major shock to those who sailed across the world’s oceans in the fifteenth,
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Still today, however, this situation of religious pluralism
greatly alarms some people when their eyes are suddenly opened to the great number of religions
to which varying people choose to adhere. As the nations of the world interact more and more,
and as more peoples immigrate to new countries, the context of religious pluralism becomes
even more readily apparent. “Religious pluralism is part of the larger plurality of races, people,
and cultures, of social structures, economic systems, and political patterns,” and within this
wider plurality, religious pluralism specifically is “the fact that different religions respond to the
Mystery of Ultimate Reality…in different ways.”70 And it is said to be not just the human
response to the Ultimate Reality that determines this variety. As Samartha writes, “Plurality
emphasizes that the Mystery of God…is too profound to be exhausted by any particular
apprehensions of it.”71

Responding to Pluralism
Faced with this pluralism, some continue to view all other religions (and sometimes their
adherents too) in a negative or condescending fashion. And while some believers have become
anxious over the realization of global religious pluralism, others choose to see religious pluralism
as a phenomenon which has potentially positive consequences for their own religion. As John
Hick asserts, “Religious pluralism challenges some of our traditional dogmas. It does not require
that any of the basic Christian ideas be abandoned, but that they be understood afresh in non-
traditional ways.”72 What is more, these other religions are said to offer to members of the
established church “much that Christians find sorely lacking in themselves.”73 For instance, it is
fitting for Christians “to learn much from men of other faiths – in devotion, humility, courage
and a host of other virtues.”74 Examining other religions and other lords and saviours, it is said
that in this way one can gain a better understanding of one’s own religion, and one’s own Christ.

69
Charles Davis, Christ and the World Religions (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1970), 101.
70
S.J. Samartha, One Christ – Many Religions: Toward a Revised Christology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991), 4.
71
Samartha, One Christ, 8.
72
John Hick, A Christian Theology of Religions: The Rainbow of Faiths (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox
Press, 1995), 125.
73
John B. Cobb, Jr. Christ in a Pluralistic Age (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1975), 18.
74
Norman Anderson, Christianity and World Religions: The Challenge of Pluralism (Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 1984), 139.
 18

Even the New Testament is claimed to “provide a basis that is…theologically sound for new
relationships with neighbors of other faiths.”75 And so, rather than withdrawing from any
interaction with other religions, some Christians have eagerly used such interaction to facilitate
healthy introspection and personal growth in piety and love for one’s neighbor.
Out of such interaction, it is also discovered that there are elements of common value to
both Christians and believers of other religions. Such elements of commonality include various
features (here framed in Christian language): how Jesus constantly pointed to the divine truths of
the Kingdom of God; his intense realization of personal vocation; his total sense of freedom from
attachment to the material things of this world; his active compassion for the down-trodden; his
steady obedience to law and duty; his love of true wisdom; his unflappable dedication to God
even in suffering.76 In these elements, Jesus can be juxtaposed with other liberators and
messiahs in this world; as they are revered, Jesus can be revered “as [a] supreme teacher and
inspirer.”77 Indeed, it is said that Christ and Christianity are the convergence “of the
developmental tendencies that can be discerned in religion,”78 not necessarily superior, but
inclusive of elements of many ways of religion and religious “founders.”
It is this sort of conclusion that also Tom Harpur reached in his book The Pagan Christ.
There, in his pleading for a metaphorical approach to the Christian message and scriptures,
Harpur sees that in such a way, the road can be opened for a greater understanding among all
religions: If we regard Jesus in a mythical sense rather than literally as God,
then the vast theological offense currently given to the majority of other faiths,
particularly Islam and Judaism, is not simply mitigated – it is entirely removed. Thus lies
open a way to interfaith understanding that otherwise can never exist. This has enormous
potential for world peace, since there is currently an underlying religious dimension to
almost every conflict on the face of the globe.79

Instead of an exclusive Christianity and a sectarian Christ, Harpur would have every human seek
the “Christ” who lies within. Such a path of personal religion is deemed to be crucial to peace
and harmony among all peoples of every creed and belief.

75
Samartha, One Christ, 133.
76
For an elaboration on these elements, see Samartha, One Christ, 133-140.
77
Hick, Theology of Religions, 126.
78
Ernst Troeltsch, The Absoluteness of Christianity and the History of Religions, tr. David Reid. Research in
Theology Series (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press; English ed. 1971; original ed. 1929), 114.
79
Harpur, Pagan Christ, 189.
 19

However well-intentioned are the efforts to effect peace among the humans of this world,
these efforts are beset with weakness. For example, asserting that Christ and Buddha are but two
names for the same religious reality is deeply problematic. For “Christ and Buddha do not name
the same reality…No other image is identical with Christ, and theology itself cannot abandon its
concern for just that image.”80 The danger of indifferent relativism is here very apparent, for if
religious faith is held without conviction, it will not be expressed in any action, either bad or
good. “Authentic faith demands unconditional commitment from its followers…this is a
necessary devotion for anybody who wishes to know God in any of God’s revelations.”81
Indeed, as Ingham states well, “We have no choice but to commit ourselves to a particular path if
we wish to pursue the goal of spiritual understanding.”82 Religious peace in our age of pluralism
needs to be sought in a different and more nuanced way.

Conclusions
Examining Jesus Christ in the context of pluralism is vital in our present situation
because it is instructive. In such an examination, we do see elements of commonality between
Christ and Christianity on the one hand, and the founders of religions and their religions on the
other. Language is fluid enough to allow for such commonality to be found, and even for such
commonality to be the basis of a greater cooperation and mutual appreciation. However, we have
also seen that we simply cannot say that every religion is the same, nor that Jesus Christ is the
same as every other religious leader. To do so is intellectually dishonest. Such relativism “is too
simplistic,” and it “appears unable to discriminate between healthy and unhealthy religious
beliefs.”83 Perhaps the most we can do as different religions is to strive for common
understanding, for mutual respect, and even for unification on certain causes that concern
humankind in general. Yet even with such shared altruistic religious desire, we have not reached
a definitive answer on the uniqueness of Christ, or on his meaning for us, personally, today. Thus
now is a good time to summarize our findings so far.

80
Cobb, Pluralistic Age, 19-20.
81
Michael Ingham, Mansions of the Spirit: The Gospel in a Multi-Faith World (Toronto, ON: Anglican Book
Centre, 1997), 78.
82
Ingham, Mansions, 79
83
Ingham, Mansions, 83.
 20

Conclusions on the Uniqueness of Jesus the Christ

To this point, we have seen that the matter of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ can be
viewed from various angles: historical, theological and religious. Through these different
examinations, it has been clear that there is no simple answer to the question of whether Jesus
Christ is unique. However, as we consider the question of Jesus’s uniqueness, we must not
discard the evidence that we have surveyed, for we remember that this question is still important
to how we will answer who Jesus Christ is for us today. For again, if Jesus was not unique, some
will conclude that he can be relegated to the periphery of history and religion. Further, if Jesus
Christ was not unique, the contribution of his life and teachings do not amount to much that
cannot be found elsewhere. On the other hand, if Jesus was indeed unique, and if he offered a
distinctive way to God, we ought to give the question of his importance today careful
consideration.
Let us then briefly recall what we have observed over the course of this paper. We have
seen that as a Jew, Jesus was largely a conformist, though at the same time he was unique on
account of his superior teaching and moral practice. We have also seen that for centuries there
has been a messianic expectation, a hope for temporary or permanent deliverance from evil or
oppression; such expectation has been said by some to be fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth, while
others have seen it fulfilled in a variety of other figures and realities.84 Finally, we have
observed that relative to other religious leaders and their religions, Jesus and Christianity are not
necessarily unique in every respect, but nor can they be easily equated with these other religious
figures and phenomena.
It appears that the weakness of all these angles of approach is that, in one way or another,
they disregard what the Christian scriptures themselves say. It is true, as alluded to at various
points above, there is debate over the historical reliability of the books of the Hebrew Bible and
the New Testament, the two parts that together form the Christian scriptures. Having said that,
even among contemporary Biblical scholars, there is no consensus about what might be authentic
and what might have been added by later believers – especially what might have been added to
the New Testament by later Christians. Surveying the work of Biblical scholars, however, it
seems that almost any passage in the Christian Scriptures could be argued against as not

84
Anderson, Christianity, 169; he speaks of the Christian view of this messianic expectation in other religions as a
sort of praeparatio evangelica.
 21

indicative of the true spirit of its religion or its founder, and could then be discarded.85 Such
judgments invariably involve the subjective reasoning and personal biases of Biblical scholars.
Thus, if we are methodologically able to relegate to the dustbin whatever parts and texts of the
New Testament that we choose, Jesus of Nazareth will surely lose whatever uniqueness he might
possibly have had.
Again, we cannot simply dismiss any textual discussion out of hand; there is a time and
place for such careful examinations of the history of a teaching or text. However, for any religion
to be credible to its adherents, it must be at the very least internally consistent. In this regard,
Christians must begin with the faith-assumption that their scriptures are consistent and also
generally reliable in what they contain. To ensure the credibility that stems from consistency and
immunity from undue criticism, it is important to accept what the scriptures say – not just the
Christian scriptures, the scriptures of every religion: Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Confucianism,
and so on. If we do not, and then practice endless textual criticism and creative reconstruction,
every religion will eventually be able to be collapsed into another. As Samartha points out in a
similar context, “Obviously, a critical principle needs to be developed in a multireligious
situation, or plurality might degenerate into a sea of relativity in which different boats flounder
aimlessly without rudders.”86 Dismantling the scriptures of every religion will leave us with no
particularity at all.
Rather – and here let us speak about the New Testament particularly – if we broadly
accept it as it has been historically been preserved, the uncertain picture of the uniqueness of
Jesus Christ of Nazareth changes and becomes more clear. To begin with: he is a real person, not
fictional; he is an event, complex and irrevocable; he is a presence, “united to us in an
interpersonal union of knowledge and love;” and finally, Jesus Chris is the Word of God, for “in
him is embodied an unsurpassable fullness of divine communication.”87
We can continue this portrait further. To underline what we saw before: he was a faithful
Jew, who sought “to fulfill all righteousness” (Matt 3:15), wanting to keep all the demands of the
Jewish law. While he was a conformist with regard to the law, again, he also thought of himself
as the promised Messiah, even though there were differing expectations in Israel about what the

85
See, e.g., John Hick, Theology of Religions, 126: “New Testament scholarship has shown that the historical Jesus
did not claim to be God incarnate and that what we know as the doctrines of the Incarnation, Trinity, and Atonement
have escalated into theoretical constructions going far beyond the original experience to which they are related.”
86
Samartha, One Christ, 7.
 22

Messiah would be. When Peter confessed him as “the Christ” as we saw earlier, Jesus answered
with an affirming blessing, “Blessed are you…for this was not revealed to you by man, but by
my Father in heaven” (Matt 16:17). We see in this statement an aspect of Jesus’s particularity
that is also pointed out by Bruce Chilton; despite his uniqueness, Jesus did not necessarily want
to place himself in the centre: “All his work was undertaken to open the gate of heaven so that
Israel might enter before the Throne of God.”88 As Jesus says in Matthew 16, God the Father
revealed Jesus as the Messiah, because Jesus was the one who would show the way back to God:
“Christ is not the bringer of a new religion, but rather the one who brings God.”89
In this God-given role of Messiah, Jesus performed a variety of activities in his ministry,
but also these were in accordance with the expectation of the Hebrew scriptures. For example,
about his teaching he said, “Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have
not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matt 5:17). And even as Jesus of Nazareth went to
the Roman cross, the Gospel writers point out in many of the episodes on this trajectory how he
did so in fulfillment of the Hebrew scriptures.90 Indeed, as Messiah, Jesus was not finding his
own way, nor creating his own legacy, but he was standing firmly on the Jewish traditions.
Yet in fulfilling these traditions of his people, Jesus most certainly did stand alone, as
someone unique. For there could be only one Messiah.91 As Jesus himself said in John 14 before
he went to his death, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except
through me” (v 6).92 This teaching was borne out at the end of his life, when it is said that he
alone died for the sins of humankind. It this singular reality that the later Christian writers
explained; Peter announces in Acts 4:12, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other
name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” The view of the apostles, and the
many Christians who followed, is that Christ is unique in being the only way to God.93
As for all those other cultures who have had messianic expectation, it is notable that the
New Testament addresses them as well. When Paul speaks to the philosophers on the Areopagus

87
For these elements, see Davis, World Religions, 124-126.
88
Chilton, Rabbi Jesus, 292.
89
Bonhoeffer, 1998, 47.
90
See, e.g., Matt 26:32; 27:46; John 19:24.
91
There was an expectation to two messiahs current in Qumran community, but this was particular to this small
group within Judaism.
92
For a discussion on this text, see Anderson, Christianity, 142-143: “It constitutes an unequivocal affirmation that
in the incarnate Lord, uniquely, men can find the road to God, the truth about God, and the life of God.”
93
For other texts supporting the exclusivist position of Christianity, see Ingham, Mansions, 56-57.
 23

in Athens, he tells them about the God they thought of as unknown: “Now what you worship as
something unknown I am going to proclaim to you” (Acts 17:23). And so Paul explains how God
gave a testimony to the world, “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should
inhabit the while earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they
should live” (v 26). This was for a purpose, says Paul: “God did this so that men would seek him
and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us” (v 27).
Then Paul quotes the Cretan poet Epimenedes, and the Sicilian poet Aratus, “‘For in him we live
and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring’” (v
28). Again we see pagan literature being applied to the Christian message, though not as
explicitly as others would later do it. Paul also drives home the point that with the coming of
Christ, the situation has changed: “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he
commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world
with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him
from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31). Paul in this speech only alludes to Jesus Christ, calling him “the
man [God] has appointed,” yet the point of reference is clear. Because of the coming of Jesus
Christ, the nations of the world are all called to repent and believe in his name.
It is this summons to personal response that Habicht also points out in his study of
Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue as a marked difference between many pagan saviours and the Christian
saviour: “Unlike the pagan savior, he demands some measure of cooperation from those to be
saved, at least faith in him.”94 Consequent to this call to faith, the New Testament authors cast
Jesus Christ as unique, and even exclusive.
This exclusive claim of Christianity has been repugnant to many, yet it is the clear
teaching of the Christian scriptures. There is little value in trying to argue this claim away, just as
there is little value in trying to discard the ostensibly difficult parts of other religions and their
scriptures. As Cobb says well, “Christians cannot continue to be Christians without believing
that for them Christ is truly supremely important.”95 Conversely, Ingham astutely observes
about inclusivism: “It offers an interpretation of the mystery of God’s grace in other people’s
lives that is not true to their experience, and that cannot be recognized by them as genuine.”96
Davis further states, “The universality and finality of Christ [cannot] be denied without emptying

94
Habicht, “Messianic Elements,” 54; cf. Anderson, Christianity, 174.
95
Cobb, Pluralistic Age, 19.
 24

the Christian tradition of meaning.”97 Thus, for the Christian who accepts the New Testament
scriptures as they historically have been passed down, Jesus Christ must be unique.
As a consequence, devotion to this Christ can only be made with the entire heart and life.
His uniqueness is a central aspect of who he is, for that is what he says he is.98 As Bonhoeffer
once wrote, “The religion of Christ is not a tidbit after one’s bread; on the contrary, it is bread or
it is nothing.”99 In answering the question of who Jesus Christ is for us today, it is evident that
there needs to be a full-orbed commitment to Christ or none at all, for this is the demand of who
he is: “Understanding Christ means taking Christ seriously. Understanding this claim means
taking seriously his absolute claim on our commitment.”100

96
Ingham, Mansions, 70-71.
97
Davis, World Religions, 127; we note that Davis goes on to state that this reality does not mean that there are no
meaningful religious symbols outside of the Christian tradition, nor that Christians have nothing to learn religiously
from other traditions, nor that other religions have no function in God’s providential ordering of history (127-128).
98
See, e.g., John 14:6, as mentioned above.
99
Bonhoeffer, 1998, 44.
100
Bonhoeffer, 1998, 44.
 25

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