Review of Chung's Christ the One and Only

In a world rapidly moving to twin extremes, pluralism and athiesm, there are unfortunately fewer and fewer voices who bring intellectual dialogue to the religious roundtable. Whereas pluralism says there are many ways to God and whereas athiesm denies His existence, the Christian evangelical message is that there is a God and that there is only one way to know Him. If Christians are going to continue to share the Good News that Jesus saves the sinner from sin, they had better get used to speaking within these ever increasing conversations as well.

             Sung W. Chung’s Christ the One and Only: A Global Affirmation of the Uniqueness of Jesus Christ is a collection of essays by a variety of Christian writers from varying evangelical positions on the subject. Each writer draws attention to a different aspect of the advent of the Christ and how that relates to the major world religions. Beginning with Jesus’ birth and taking various facets of his life, teaching, and salvific work, the authors establish Christ’s uniqueness as a starting point for conversation with other faiths. The latter essays attempt to establish talking points for the major world religions and Christianity by invoking Christ’s uniqueness as the leverage for dialogue. Chung closes the book with his own essay related to the dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism, but he also provides a framework for productive interfaith dialogue.

The first essay highlights the uniqueness of Jesus’ incarnation.  Elias Dantas takes an historical approach to show how the Christian church has affirmed the reality and necessity of the virgin birth. He lists alternative views like Ebionism that has denied the deity of Christ and Docetism that denied his humanity. He shows how Gnosticism was dealt with during the Reformation period and how the great ecumenical church councils rejected Arianism, Apollinarianism, Nestorianism and Eutycheanism. What was finally affirmed was the church’s official position on Christ being fully man and fully God in one Person.

Clark Pinnock then attempts to establish the uniqueness of Christ’s teaching.  In short, Pinnock believes Jesus’ vocation was successful because his teaching was successful. Although he is personally against a literal interpretation of Scripture, Pinnock places a great emphasis on the didactic work of Christ. His teaching about God set him apart from other teachers of his day and throughout history.

The symbol of the cross, handled by Graham Tomlin, has been received in different ways throughout history. During the medieval times, it was seen as a sign of Christian aggression. However, Paul and the early church made it central to their teaching and identity. Martin Luther made it the crux of both his doctrine and spirituality. Pascal used it to unlock the mystery of understanding God. Christ’s crucifixion is unlike any other soteriological symbol.

Gabriel Fackre takes Jesus’ assertions of being the only way, truth and life to apply to a grand narrative. He sees God beginning his work in creation, man rejecting God and yet God accepting man. Through the cross Jesus’ offices of prophet, priest and king are defined. The church is the body of Christ by which mankind enters into communion with Christ. Then Fackre issues a call for hope in universal salvation through a post-mortem evangelism and possibility of temporary hellfire. All in all, Fackre sees Jesus’ resurrection as the guarantee for this salvation.

Mark Thompson takes two approaches to defining the uniqueness of Jesus’ revelation. Exegetically, God made himself “known at particular times to particular people” (92). In the Torah, he revealed himself in part through the ark of the covenant and the temple. In the New Testament, he revealed himself explicitly through the Person of Jesus Christ as the one and only who came from the Father. Thompson takes the claims of Christ’s exclusivity to answer the question of pluralism by stating that “those outside of Christ do not know the God who created them” (107).

Veli-Matti Karkkainen promotes the uniqueness of Christ’s role in the Trinity. Like Thompson he also deals with the challenge of pluralism, but he believes placing the Trinity in the dialogue is a great resource for the exclusivist. Only in the Trinity can the Christian God be defined in a historical context. Karkkainen surveys various positions, but he takes specific issue with Hick for his denial of the Trinity and with Knitter for his denial of absolute truth. In the end his “general dissatisfaction with pluralism includes critique of their either too general a view of salvation (the ‘self-realization’ of Hick) or the particularist (the eco-liberation of Knitter)” (129).

            These unique characteristics are then applied to various world religions. Ellen Charry

deals with what she calls an eternal crusade by looking at Christianity through Judaism’s eyes and Judaism through Christian eyes. The basic points of conflict revolve around the uniqueness of Christ in relation to what must be accepted soteriologically and thereby what constitutes the true people of God. Christians do not understand why Jews would not want to accept Jesus as their Messiah. However, Jews already seeing themselves as God’s people do not see a need for salvation. Moreover, to accept a man in God’s place would constitute blasphemy. Charry leaves these two religions incompatible, except for the notion that Jesus is still unique to Christians.

            Paul Chung believes that Buddhism shares some common elements with Christianity. Using the doctrine of justification, he compares Luther with Shinran. This interfaith dialogue might not bring the two world religions any closer together, but Chung believes that it focuses the adherent to his own beliefs in a newer way.

            Accordingly, Ng Kam Weng discusses the commonalities between Islam and Christianity. Muslim acceptance of Jesus as a lesser prophet to Mohammed offers a dialogical inquiry into what an Old Testament prophet really was. Admittedly with certain difficulties, presenting Jesus as an eschatological prophet who still has a work to complete could be a starting point for this discussion. Weng believes that when Muslims can see Jesus as God in Christ they may move beyond the fatal sin of shirk and begin to see Jesus’ soteriological role.

            In his essay, K.K. Yeo does not deal as much with the uniqueness of Christ as with agape love and the law as Confucian concepts of ren and li. Yeo says that “to be a full Confucianist is to be a Christian” (203). According to Yeo, Jesus’ teachings can be best understood through Confucianism’s teachings and vice versa.

            Finally, Sung Wook Chung also tackles a dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity by noting several points of contact. He promotes a missional model for interfaith dialogue that “allows Christians to explore the possible points of contact between Christianity and other religions and to employ these points of contact to share the gospel with those who are adherents of other religions” (225). By relating to Buddhism’s tenets of suffering, craving, cessation and moral cultivation, Christianity can find dialogical touch points for sharing a clear gospel message. 

My Take on Chung's Approach

Chung’s presentation of such a wide variety of evangelical positions in this book seems to stem from the fact that even evangelicals differ on main points, but the uniqueness of Christ still brings them together. It is for that reason that there is hope in anchoring the evangelical message on this one point and thereby finding the window for the evangelical community to interact with other world religions. Chung states early on that the essays he has gathered for this book are by writers who adhere to the “absolute uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the only Lord and Savior of humanity” (x). Moreover, a reaffirmation of this common tenet then becomes the sticking point in defining who will contribute to the discussion.

            Because of the varying authors, each chapter has its own unique style and flow. Some of the writers produce an essay that reads more like a survey, while others engage directly in a comparative study of religions. The writers also have varying backgrounds, theologically covering the spectrum of evangelical Christianity and geographically representing the globe. But the thing that unifies their contributions is the mainstream evangelical stance that Jesus is unique.

Furthermore, although the writers do vary in their stances, extreme positions are not represented. Karkkainen seems to lean somewhat in his Trinitarian stance toward a greater openness to pluralism, but the extreme ecumenical pluralist would not appreciate the book’s tendency toward recognizing the absolute truth found in Jesus Christ. Thompson seems to be more of an exclusivist in his questioning the very value of an interfaith dialogue, but the extreme separatist would not appreciate the books openness to find elements of Christian contact within other world religions.

            Chung’s main thesis is that Christianity can indeed find those points of contact with other religions by holding the advent of Jesus as a banner for comparison. Chung admits there are limitations to these contact points, but he encourages their exploration nonetheless. Still he holds Christ’s uniqueness in high regard, and that seems to be the strongest point for this book.

The book presents a theology of religions that is clearly Christocentric as opposed to bibliocentric or theocentric. The centrality of the cross is self-evident, but Chung goes further to promote a more comprehensive Christology from a much broader perspective than just the soteriology of the cross. The whole advent of the Christ, from his incarnation to his future eschatological role, is brought into play in this conversation. Tomlin promotes the cross as a symbol that can find value in other religions. Fackne suggests that Christ speaks through a range of religious interpretations. Karkkainen goes further to say that the Spirit of Christ is at work in other religions. 

Although this Christocentric approach informs Chung’s theology of religions, there are nonetheless some writers who seem to toy with pluralism. Clark Pinnock’s stance against bibliocentric Christology, for example, seems to hurt his own argument for Christ’s uniqueness. When he says that the Magi visits recorded in Scripture are not factual or that the church has placed an undo emphasis on the virgin birth of Christ, he unwittingly destroys whatever evidence he might have appealed to for the uniqueness of Christ’s teaching. Because it could be argued that a proper Christology must be founded in Scripture, Pinnock’s rejection of biblical historicity dances dangerously on the edge of the very tenets that fuel pluralism.

In response to this tension between pluralists and exclusivists within the evangelical camp, Chung proposes a “missional model” (225) for dialogue with other religions. The weakness of this model, however, is that it is still somewhat ambiguous in its application. Chung attempts to apply the model in a dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism in his final chapter, but it still falls short of communicating the “solid and clear” (238) salvific truth that he desires. He acknowledges that limitation by disclaiming his missional model as the final conversation, but he nevertheless promotes it as a starting point in the dialogue.

Chung’s attempt to synthesize a Christological perspective across the evangelical spectrum is important. Although some have complained that his essay collection omitted crucial conversation partners like Western secularists, folk religions or Hinduism, it is sufficient to test his theory that a high Christology can be useful in interfaith dialogue. In a day when pluralism and tolerance are being promoted as the only means for a round table discussion, Chung sets a chair for the intelligent evangelical who cannot deny the strong claims of Christ as the only way, truth and life. Chung admits that mutual love and concern must be the atmosphere for exchanging ideas, but his book shows where exclusive truth claims can find conversation partners with other world religions.