The Way, The Truth, The Life

Not just a way, a truth, or a life. The Way, The Truth, The Life.

Over at Rod Dreher’s I ran across this very interesting passage on apologetics. One of the major challenges we face today is the feeling that we must be arrogant and “discriminatory” to claim anything exclusive about salvation:

The origins of this difficulty lie deep in the mentality of post-Enlightenment modernity and its multifarious theological progeny. According to this mentality, all religions express some experience of the absolute or ultimate or transcendent reality–however it is named and described–that encompasses worldly existence. No religion can claim to possess a privileged description of a reality incomprehensible and ineffable to all equally, nor to afford unique access to a realm in principle available to all equally. We might call this mentality and the religious outlook it fosters the culture of pluralism. It surrounds us on every side and helps to shore up a barrier that stands in the path of many Catholics today, young and old.
In order to clear away this barrier, we need in the first place to make clear that our faith in Christ’s uniqueness does not entail a devaluation of the world’s religions. The religions of the world are monuments to the human search for God. As such, they are worthy of respect and study because of the immense cultural richness of their witness to the desire for God planted in every human heart.

But the Christian faith attests not only to the human search for God, but principally to God’s search for us. And what God wants to share with us is nothing less than a communion of life, a share or participation in the divine trinitarian life. This is the basic starting point for understanding the unique role of Jesus Christ in the salvation of the human race.