Religion, the gospel and humanity
Stephen Curkpatrick

Cornelius is an example of the many Gentile God-fearers who chose to identify with the story of God in Israel by contrast to paganism, polytheism and idolatry. In his encounter with Cornelius, Peter displays religious sensibilities that must be relinquished so that an encounter between the gospel of God and Cornelius can occur. Peter is limited by religious scruples until he receives a vision of grace that speaks beyond the scope of religion in its cultural limits. The rooftop vision of a great sheet with unclean creatures and a thrice repeated command to eat, calls on Peter to question his religious presuppositions.

The story of grace that threads through the story of Israel and which for Christians has its focus in Christ, is the locale of the gospel of God—a Pentecostal story of the Holy Spirit and the last days or a new creation in Christ that transcends cultural and religious scruples. The encounter between Peter and Cornelius is more than a pleasant dialogue that merely affirms the existing religious stance, values and sensibilities of each. It is an encounter with good news that transforms both interlocutors and their commitments beyond existing horizons of possibility.

Christians are often surrounded by diverse religious beliefs and practices. This is not new. Christians are also in various forms of evangelical dialogue within human culture. This dialogue is about good news. Its expressions are as varied as human needs and paths of life, while the good news relates to a shared reality for all humans—each person is unique and also living within a horizon of death with its subtle impact on life.

The good news of God’s demonstrative love in Jesus Christ invokes dialogue with any person, whatever his or her cultural or religious allegiances. This may occur in deeds that are experienced as good news, which is later declared and heard in words; it may occur in words that enlighten the desire for good news, leading to transformation of a person’s deeds.

However it begins and with whatever words and deeds it is expressed, evangelical dialogue transcends culture and religion as good news that God, in the initiative of disclosure and love, invites every person into a communion of grace and life. Jesus Christ is the focus of this disclosure; the Holy Spirit is its transforming possibility for any person. In reality, evangelical dialogue is not between Christian faith and any religion but between the gospel of God and human beings.

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Although he has been confessed in many tribes and expressed through numerous cultures, Jesus Christ is not confined to any tribe or culture. His claim upon humanity as the way, truth and life for the tribes of the earth is therefore possible. Religion inevitably concerns some form of tribal and cultural expression of the deputed truth about humanity and its ultimate focus of belief, behaviour or obligations.

Inasmuch as Jesus Christ contests every social and cultural limit to integral humanity, he also contests religion in its allegiance to any tribal and cultural origin, expression or obligation. Inasmuch as allegiance to Jesus Christ becomes tribally and culturally bound, this too is exposed to the same critique incurred by religion.

Inasmuch as allegiance is given in word and deed to Jesus Christ as the truth of our humanity and the disclosure of God’s grace, this allegiance is not religious. It is a response to the nature of God as gracious life-giver, disclosed uniquely as love in the One who reveals humanity as it can be—apart from all the ways that humans seek to shore-up their humanity and give it colour, socially, culturally and even religiously.

As people become aware of many religious traditions—as a supposedly new discovery—the question of Christian uniqueness becomes an issue. Where parallel religious aspirations toward ultimate reality are accepted, Christian testimony to the initiative of God in unique disclosure to humanity is invariably rejected. Yet any proposal of religious equivalence is ultimately irrelevant to Christian faith. In essence, Christian faith is a response to grace. The gospel of grace is a critique of any religion’s assumed knowledge of divinity or definitive expression of the human good.

In Christian testimony, God is unknown as to character within human perspective, personal or cultural. Christian faith also articulates the necessity of redemption for humans in their self-compromise. As a response to God’s disclosure in grace for humanity in Christ, Christian faith cannot be equated with the cultural and tribal specificities of religion. As the necessary preface for human wholeness, the self-emptying initiative of triune love in Christ declares the end and impossibility of religion.

Whatever good occurs in humanity, religious or otherwise, is due to the creative and sustaining grace of God alone—in spite of religious demarcation or tribalism. The Word became flesh, not as religious but as grace and truth in critique of any presumed ascent to God, spiritual quest for traces of divinity within phenomena, or codification of the definitive human good.

To correlate Jesus Christ with other religious or ideal figures by identifying similarities in their words and deeds is merely to make comparisons within human possibilities. What any comparison cannot account for is the glory of God—that which is only recognised by faith or not seen at all.

It is possible to analyse Jesus of Nazareth as one among similar examples and make religious or ideological comparisons. Yet to recognise him as the grace and truth of God whom no one has seen is to see his glory. God is given to our recognition in grace and truth through Jesus Christ. This cannot be perceived and therefore received within a comparison between assumedly similar figures, religious or ideological. To see his glory is to recognise a reality that exceeds any comparison among others.

It may seem plausible, even clever to construe comparisons while avoiding the New Testament’s superlative testimony to Jesus Christ, yet this is merely to become an adjudicator of comparisons among selected exemplars of human ideals. The definitive claim of Jesus Christ on human life is thereby obscured.

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The most positive way in which relationships have occurred between people of different religious traditions is when collaborative projects and responsibilities, not religion, are the focus of attention. Skilled people—who happen to be Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu or even agnostic—working together for the well-being of others, do so with shared skills and specific insights from their experiences.

The wholeness of humanity not religion generates shared aspirations within complementary skills and mutual commitments. This is precisely the focus of Christian gospel in which incarnation gives priority to human dignity instead of religious considerations.

The gospels elevate grace over religiously endorsed scruples—for example, the Sabbath was made for humans and not humans for the Sabbath. Christian gospel affirms the dignity of humans, without confusing this dignity with ritual, culture or flight from creaturely status, for the incarnation gives the truth of humanity in the midst of creation.

Christian faith gives focus to human wholeness in Jesus Christ. Inasmuch as humans participate in this focus, they begin to participate in the initiative of God in grace, whether they claim to be religious or not. Alternatively, any concession to religious relativity, however plausible this may seem as a civic virtue, will invariably diminish Christian testimony to God’s grace for humanity as focused unequivocally in Jesus Christ.