Inclusivism, Exclusive, and Pluralism
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 22, 2019
1 Timothy 2:1-7
First of all, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For
there is one God;
there is also one mediator between God and humankind,
Christ Jesus, himself human,
who gave himself a ransom for all
— this was attested at the right time. For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
As many of you know, I work two jobs – here at St. Michael’s and also, I work as a chaplain at Wellesley College. I used to be the Protestant Chaplain, but now I am College Chaplain and Christian Life Coordinator. What that means is that I am now responsible for overseeing every Christian Organization on campus – I think there are 18 organizations – from Newman Catholic Campus Ministry to Intervarsity and Campus Crusade for Christ which is now just called Cru. It has been interesting to get to know these groups of Christians – and how different they are from one another. And what has been most eye opening for me is the sense of what it means to be saved. As a life-long Episcopalian I hold a very generous view towards God’s saving power and grace – I suppose because that is what I learned in church. I figure God made us so God must love us, as God’s children. I figure that God wouldn’t go through the trouble of making us all if at the end of the day God wanted to invite some of us from heaven and send others to hell.
But this opinion is in stark contrast to those who believe that you can only be saved if you belong to a particular church. There are denominations that hold pretty strict views of who are the chosen, how they are chosen, who is saved, and the mechanism of salvation.
The reason I am talking about this this morning is that our lesson from 1 Timothy says: “This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.” So, what does that mean? “God desires everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.”
In the world of theology, the theologians have come down to basically three different views of salvation – which I will share with you.
The first is to say that it is our job as Christians to go out and convert people to Christianity so they will be saved. That is what theologians call the exclusivist position. Only through faith in Christ can you be saved during this life and the next.
The next position is that you are saved by Christ despite your religion. There are a few variations of this belief which is called the inclusivism. That is, the belief that although you do not follow Christ, after your mortal life is over you will meet God face to face and you can decide then whether you want to accept Christ. Or another variation is that the Holy Spirit manifests itself in all the world religions and positively influences followers of other religions so that they can be saved.
The final position is the pluralist position. The pluralist position is that no religion is the one absolute true religion – every religion is like a different path up the same mountain. All religions, that are neither harmful nor hateful, are on equal footing on the truth stakes.
The pluralist position is best expressed by the story of the three blind man and the elephant – which I am fairly sure is a story familiar to many of you.
The parable of the blind men and an elephant is said to have originated from ancient Indian subcontinent.[1] Exhibit number 1[2].
It is a story of a group of blind men, who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and conceptualize what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant’s body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other.
One version of the story is the following:
A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: “We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable”. So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. In the case of the first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said “This being is like a thick snake”. For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant, “is a wall”. Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.
In some versions, the blind men come to suspect that the other men are dishonest and they come to blows. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people’s limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true.
You can see where this story exemplifies the pluralist view of salvation. We’re all trying touch and understand part of the elephant.
So what does this mean for us? What is the good news of the First Letter to Timothy 2.1-7? Well – there is a lot of good news.
The first is that God desires the salvation of all. God does not desire the salvation of a few. God does not desire the salvation of a couple of worthies. God desires the salvation of us all. That’s there in the text.
But the second thing is this – it does not mean that we don’t need to do anything. Just like the author of this epistle, we are called to be “heralds and apostles for the Lord”. And what that means is that sometimes people will come into our lives who need to hear the good news of Christ, or, to be more specific, the good news of Christ’s church here at St. Michael’s. Share with them why your faith matters. Share with them how your life oriented around your Christian beliefs and values makes a difference to you. Tell them about Jesus.
The parable of the blind men and the elephant teaches us the power and importance of listening. If those blind men actually listened to each other, and they realized that the other men were indeed telling the truth of their experience, they would have together known the whole elephant.
Together, the epistle and the parable teach us to be sure in our faith, so much so that we can share the good news of Christ. But it also teaches us humility – the humility to know that none of us is capable of knowing the full expression of God in the world.
So I invite you to do two things this week. First, share the good news of your faith with one other person – if this sounds scary – share it with another Christian and tell them you are just practicing. And the second is to see where you see the Holy Spirit at work in the world in an unlikely place.
To end – I want to share with you one commentary take on this reading and it was really quite simple – so if you do not remember anything from this sermon – remember this: “There is one God and that One God loves everyone.”
Amen
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant – this section is largely quoted word for word from Wikipedia. Please see this site for a longer explanation and history of this parable
[2] Pointing to elephant bookend on pulpit
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