1.   Introduction

The purpose of this research is to examine the role of general revelation (sometimes called universal revelation) in the context of the Christian attitude towards other religions. I want to provide a broad historical overview of how this issue has been dealt with at different points throughout the history of the church, especially as it is applied to non-Christian religions. I will conclude with a few pointers to further research which would explore in-depth how these themes have been operative in the context of other religions.

Christians committed to historic orthodoxy argue that salvation is mediated through Jesus Christ. Thus, to have a robust soteriology one must affirm the uniqueness of Christ: particularly, the centrality of his death and resurrection. Traditionally, most historic Christians also insist on the necessity of a personal response. What is far less clear among those espousing historic orthodoxy is whether affirming the centrality of Christ should foster a more negative, confrontational assessment of other religions or if it could be the basis for a more generous view which demonstrates points of continuity.

One’s attitude towards other religions touches deeply on a range of theological considerations beyond our soteriology, including our understanding of revelation, how we understand the Fall, and our epistemology. Even if all non-Christian religions ultimately fall short and cannot provide salvation because they do not accept the centrality of Christ’s person and work or sufficiently foster human repentance and faith in him, this still does not settle the question of whether Christian truth is completely detached from truths which may be found through general revelation, for example, such as God’s eternal power and divine nature (Rom 1:20). Neither does exclusive soteriology settle whether aspects of other religions can serve as a stepping stone toward the biblical God, such as statements in the writings of Epimenides of Crete or in the poem of Arastus (Acts 17:28). Nor does the exclusiveness of Christ in salvation settler whether aspects of other religions might even function like a tutor to Christ just as, for example, the OT Law functioned?[1]

The purpose of this article is to overturn the widely held notion that this is a modern debate growing out of what is commonly called the “scandal of particularity” or that this debate is merely another sign of the malaise emerging from the breakup of Christendom, an increasingly pluralistic world, and the rise of post-modernity. While we do live in an age where exclusivist views of soteriology are widely scoffed at by the wider culture, the deeper issues surrounding the role of general revelation is a perennial one in the life of the church. This article will explore the role of general revelation in relation to other religions by examining three orthodox representatives who wrote deeply on the role of general revelation in relation to other religions: Justin Martyr, John Wesley, and nineteenth century fulfillment theologians.  

2.   The Patristic Period

The patristic period is that 350-year period which runs from the close of the Apostolic Age around 100 CE to the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE It is this period which gives us such remarkable figures as Tatian, Clement, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Athanasius, the Gregorys (Nazianzus and Nyssa), Jerome, and Augustine, to name a few.

While a few comments on wider patristic writers will be mentioned at the end of this section, we will focus on the theology of Justin Martyr in his Apologies and his creative use of the logos concept, and, in particular, his use of the phrase, logos spermatikos.[2] Three works form the corpus of what remains of Justin’s writings: his First and Second Apology, addressed to Emperor Antoninus Pius, and his more extensive and well-known Dialogue with Trypho, a very important precedent for inter-religious dialogue.[3]

Justin’s use of the concept of logos spermatikos or “seed of the word” in his apologetic writings is of particular interest. The general concept of logos was well known in the ancient world; it is used in a wide range of ways in the writings of Platonists, Stoics, Hellenistic Jews and, of course, in the Prologue to John’s Gospel. There is a fierce debate among scholars, which is beyond the scope of this article, about which of these groups had the biggest influence on Justin, but most agree that Justin developed the concept in a way which was singularly his own.

The specific expression logos spermatikos also appears in writings from several strands of thought in the ancient world. For the Middle Platonists, the concept was an ethical principle which sowed the foundational “seeds” from which human ethics arises. In contrast to the ethical emphasis among Platonists, the Stoics interpreted logos spermatikos as reason. They frequently use the expression in the plural, logoi spermatikoi (seeds of reason), referring to a rational capacity that pervades the entire universe and which allows humans to reason and, ultimately, to participate in divinity. The Hellenistic Jew Philo also uses the expression in his disputes with the Stoics. He seems to use the expression vaguely to refer to a “governing faculty” or “generative principle” which is present in all of nature. The exact expression logos spermatikos never appears in the NT, although Jesus’s parables of the Sower depicts the word (logos) as seeds (sperma) being sown broadly into the world (cf. Matt 13:1–9, 18–23; par. Mark 4:1–20) leading many to argue that this theological usage, rather than the more philosophical orientation of the Stoics and Platonists, is the primary reference for Justin. Indeed, Justin even uses the expression “sowing of the logos” in his Second Apology.[4]

The most explicit connection between the general philosophical usage and the more biblical and theological imagery appears in the Prologue to John’s Gospel. John, addressing the Gospel to a Greek audience, uses the familiar philosophical term logos as his starting point, but connects it with the divine, spoken word which in the book of Genesis brings the whole created order into being. Genesis begins, “In the beginning, God . . . And God said” (Gen 1:1, 3; cf. 1:6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26, 28, 29). John’s Gospel begins, “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1). Genesis goes on to picture God bringing forth the entire creation through his word (logos[5]). John’s Prologue continues to resound with this theme as he describes Christ’s presence at the creation: “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3). John then declares that God has spoken his enfleshed Word into the world. Not the original word of creation, but the Word of redemption in and through the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Word (logos) made flesh: “and the Word (logos) became flesh and lived for a while among us . . . full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). With this background, we now turn to Justin’s use of logos spermatikos.

While Justin does not use the full expression logos spermatikos in his First Apology, he makes several references to logos which are important for this study. In this work, Justin seeks to expose the errors in the false worship associated with the Greek gods and goddesses. He declares that these Olympian deities are nothing more than demons which form the basis of all such pagan religions. He goes on to praise Socrates who “endeavored by true logos and examination, to bring these things to light, and deliver men from the demons.”[6] He then makes a remarkable parallel between the things condemned by Socrates (470–399 BCE), who lived over four hundred years before Christ, and the current practices of the “Barbarians” of his own time who, he argues, were “condemned by Reason, or the Word, the Logos Himself who took shape, and became man, and was called Jesus Christ.”[7] Justin is clearly identifying the logos which became flesh in Jesus Christ with the logos by which Socrates perceived and denounced the perverse worship of the gods and goddesses in the Greek pantheon. In other passages, Justin identifies the logos spermatikos as operating in the Hebrew Prophets of the OT who not only predicted the coming of Christ, but through their writings also influenced the formulation of philosophy throughout the world. Justin specifically cites insights from Plato which he believed were drawn directly from Moses.[8]

Justin also utilizes the logos principle as a way to demonstrate to the emperor the antiquity of the Christian faith which, through logos, was able to actually precede the incarnation of Christ. He writes:

We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that He is the logos of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably (by logos) are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them; . . . and among the barbarians, Abraham, and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, and Elias and many others whose actions and names we now decline to recount.[9]

Thus, Abraham, Moses and even Socrates are considered by Justin to be Christians before Christ. This is vital to Justin’s theology because the Christian faith was rejected in large part due to its seemingly recent and novel development. Viewed from Justin’s perspective, Christianity was actually ancient because of the universal access to the logos of God throughout history. This does not, however, diminish the significance of the emergence of Christianity in history because, as we shall see, the logos of God was, for Justin, only completely and fully manifested in the historic incarnation. All previous manifestations were only shadows of what was to come. Justin refers to these pre-Christians manifestations of logos as “fragments” or “seeds” (spermatikos) of the logos.

It is in his Second Apology that Justin introduces the concept of logos spermatikos. In chapter eight Justin attributes the insights of Platonist and Stoic philosophers as well as poets like Heraclitus to the “seed of the Word” (sperma tou logou) which was “implanted” within them and is present “in every race of men.”[10] What makes Christians distinct from the other non-Christian peoples of the world is that they do not have merely the “seed” of the logos, but they have “the knowledge and contemplation of the whole logos, which is Christ.”[11] According to Justin, this explains the particular severity of Christian persecution when compared with the relatively scant persecution of the philosophers. It is because the latter “lived according to only part of the logos spermatikos” whereas Christians live by the knowledge of the “whole logos, which is Christ.”[12] This distinction between the seed of the Word and the whole Word is also used to explain the various contradictions within philosophy. Whenever they contradicted themselves it is because “they did not know the whole of the Word (logos).” If they spoke accurately, it was because they had found and properly contemplated some part of the Word.[13] Thus, Justin maintains a firm distinction between the seed and the whole, the former being a mere imitation and shadow of the whole. Nevertheless, for Justin Martyr, Greek philosophy became the tool of Christ to turn people away from the worship of false gods and to prepare them to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ who alone is the fullness of logos.[14]

To conclude our brief glimpse at a sector of the patristic writers, we should note that by the second century there was a significant, discernable divide in the church fathers about their attitudes towards general revelation and its role in a robust Christian doctrine of soteriology.[15] For example, Tertullian and Tatian take the “radical discontinuity” view, Tertullian even showing disdain for the philosophers of Athens—e.g., “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”[16] Justin Martyr and Clement, though, take the “positive continuity” view—something like the idea expressed today that “all truth is God’s truth wherever it may be found.” In light of this brief exploration of Justin Martyr’s thoughts on general revelation among philosophers, there is a significant crack in the foundations of the current widely held supposition that seeing seeds of Christian truth in non-Christian religions is really a modern debate and merely another sign of the malaise emerging from the breakup of Christendom, an increasingly pluralistic world, and the rise of post-modernity.

3.   From the 16th Century Reformation to 18th Century Wesleyans

As we focused on Justin Martyr above, though with a hint of other thinkers of his era, in this section we will mainly focus on John Wesley, though with a hint of other thinkers in his general era. In the sixteenth century the writings of John Calvin on general revelation, particularly his Institutes of the Christian Religion and his commentary on Romans, had a profound influence on the development of Reformed theology. Calvin does accept the distinction between general revelation (1.3–5) and special revelation (1.6–12).[17] Following Augustine, Calvin affirms that all people have a “sense of the divine” (sensus divinitatis). He even affirms what he calls the universal “seed of religion” (semen religionis). Despite the intriguing language, Calvin argues, unlike Justin Martyr, that due to the noetic effects of sin our epistemology is also totally depraved, not just our hearts. And this depravity prohibits us from benefiting from “knowing” or “learning” anything from this general light; in fact, we suppress it in every way, making us without excuse. The optimism found in Institutes 1.3 is significantly qualified in 1.5–6, such that without Scripture “the evidence of God in creation does not profit us.”[18] Calvin is, therefore, something like a classic presuppositionalist, meaning that we only gain access to the insights of general revelation once we have been redeemed and the veil of depravity is lifted. Thus, other religions have only enough light to condemn them and make them accountable, but not enough light to lead them to Jesus Christ.

In contrast and two centuries later, John Wesley was struck by the paradox or tension between the doctrine of total depravity, whereby the Apostle Paul clearly states that we are “dead in our trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1; Col 2:13), and the presence of a seeming avalanche of verbs which calls us to respond. We are called “to repent,” “to believe,” “to turn,” “to come,” and so forth, none of which can be done by someone who was dead. In short, Wesley developed a particular view of general revelation, all drawn from writings in the early church, which includes what we will call the doctrine of prevenient grace. For Wesley, prevenient grace is grace that precedes justification and is given to all humans. Wesley argues that texts such as “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44) and “the true light which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world” (John 1:9) point to some kind of universal grace which lifts us sufficiently out of our total depravity such that we can exercise our will. Wesley wrote, “Although I have not an absolute power over my mind, because of the corruption of my own nature; yet through the grace of God assisting me, I have a power to choose and do good, as well as evil.” He goes on, “I only assert, that there is a measure of free-will supernaturally restored to every man, together with that supernatural light which “lightens every man that cometh into the world.”[19] Contrary to popular caricatures, Wesleyans technically do not believe in free will (which is Pelagian) but freed will. The importance of this for world religions is profound since Wesleyans teach that prevenient grace is universal and is not tied to the regeneration of particular people.

Wesleyans also believe that general revelation is not merely the external witness of nature but the internal witness of human conscience. Wesley argued that we do not have merely two states of humanity—carnal man and redeemed man—but three: natural man, i.e., man under depravity and devoid of the grace of God; legal man, which is a person whose conscience has quickened them and made them aware of their sins (the Qur’an or the Upanishads could serve to prick our consciences); and evangelical man, who has been redeemed and whose heart has been reoriented away from the gravity of sin and towards the gravity of holy love by the power of the Holy Spirit. This has significant implications for epistemology in relation to other religions. It means, for example, that we as Christians can recognize that the Hindu longing for oneness with Brahman (tat twam asi) in the Upanishads is a dim reflection of the true longing we all have to be united with God’s own life. The emergence of Pure Land Buddhism demonstrates an important longing for such important Christian categories as substitutionary atonement and salvation by grace through faith.[20]

4.   19th Century Fulfillment Theology

In the nineteenth century it was actually quite common for evangelicals to adhere to the essentials of a Christo-centric soteriology and, at the same, affirm what was then known as fulfillment theology. Fulfillment theology arose out of a fascination with applying Darwinian ideas of evolution to science, sociology, religion, and ethics.[21] In the writings of Max Müller (1823–1900), for example, the concept of fulfillment robbed Christianity of all claims to revelation, and the origins of religion were viewed as an expression of universal human experience.[22] All religions were arranged in stages from the lower religions to the higher, monotheistic religions culminating in Christianity.

There were also scholars and missionaries who adopted the fulfillment concept within an evangelical framework. The most well-known scholar to do this was Monier Monier-Williams (1819–1901) of Oxford. Monier-Williams argued for the supremacy of historical Christianity as divinely revealed. He was convinced that, in time, all the other religions of the world would someday crumble as they came into contact with the truth of the Christian gospel. However, he developed a far more positive attitude towards world religions arguing that Christianity would not be victorious because it refuted all religions but because it fulfilled them. He argued that all religions reveal universal, God-given instincts, desires, and aspirations which are met in the Christian gospel.

The missionary community, particularly in India where they were meeting stiff resistance from Hinduism, latched on to fulfillment ideas and began to explore them with earnest in the early years of the twentieth century. The most notable and articulate expression of fulfillment thought came from missionaries working in India such as T. E. Slater (1840–1912) in his work, The Higher Hinduism in Relation to Christianity (1906) and J. N. Farquhar’s (1861–1929) landmark book The Crown of Hinduism (1913). Slater and Farquhar were two of the earliest scholars to produce major works which ambitiously set out to compare the doctrines of Hinduism with doctrines in Christianity, demonstrating a fulfillment theme.[23] Farquhar sought to establish a non-confrontational bridge for the Hindu to cross over to Christianity because, he argued, all of the notable features and aspirations within Hinduism find their highest expression and ultimate fulfillment in Christianity. He based the fulfillment theme on Christ’s claim in Matt 5:17 that he had not come to abolish or destroy, but to fulfill.

The notion of fulfillment theology would be challenged in the twentieth century due to the two World Wars which completely changed the optimistic climate of the nineteenth century. Hendrick Kraemer in his The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, the thesis of which was espoused at the influential 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference and later published in 1938, was a major re-assertion of the “radical discontinuity” view. This book became a rallying cry for evangelicals around the world and tended, even though Kraemer later said it was not his intention, to dull the memory of the church regarding earlier, more positive assessments of other religions.[24]

Regardless of intentions, the fulfillment motif among evangelicals was largely snuffed out with the publication of Kraemer’s work, which espouses a rigid, uncompromising stance toward world religions. On the liberal side, the ongoing rise of rationalistic presuppositions further encouraged evangelicals to close ranks. This, coupled with the “radical discontinuity” in the writings of the German theologian Karl Barth, further insulated many Christian writers from seriously considering fulfillment ideas. I will add, in passing, that the later emergence of inclusivism in Vatican II, in the writings of Karl Rahner, and even among evangelicals such as Clark Pinnock, has made the embrace of robust views of general revelation even more challenging in our day.

5.   Current Conversations and Future Explorations

While acknowledging that there is no independent salvation in Hinduism, Buddhism or Islam, and even that general revelation is incapable of saving anyone, a number of Christians committed to historic orthodoxy nevertheless believe that God provides truths about himself and humanity through general revelation which is accessible to all and that some of these truths have been incorporated into the beliefs of other religions, providing points of continuity wherever there is consistency with biblical revelation. This view has been advocated, for example, by Gerald McDermott’s Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions? and Harold Netland’s Encountering Religious Pluralism.[25] It is advocated in somewhat bolder terms in the writings of Amos Yong.[26]

In my own work, I have explored the application of a more robust view of general revelation to a wide range of case studies in other religions.[27] Regarding Islam, I have written extensively on how this might influence our discussion of insider movements, as well as whether the “God of Muhammad is the Father of Jesus Christ.”[28] Regarding Hinduism, I have explored the role of how Christians should interact with the “sacred texts” of other religions.[29] While that study focused exclusively on Hinduism, it has wide application for how we interact with the sacred text of any religion. It concludes with specific guidelines for how this might effectively be done. Regarding Buddhism, I have exposed the false but widely held view that the difference between Christianity and other religions is that all other religions are based on “works righteousness” and Christianity is based on grace. Actually, as noted above, there are numerous strands of “salvation by grace through faith” teachings in non-Christian religions. (What they lack is salvation by grace through faith in Christ Jesus—and he makes all the difference.) Nowhere is the doctrine so clearly stated as in the popular Jodo Shin Shu (True Pure Land) stream of Mahayana Buddhism, which first emerged in Japan in the thirteenth century through the Buddhist reformer, Shinran Shonin (1173–1262). Even Karl Barth once described the Jodo Shin Shu teaching of Shinran as “the most adequate and comprehensive and illuminating heathen parallel to Christianity.”[30] I explore many ways that True Pure Land teaching points toward aspects of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

6.   Conclusion

In conclusion, the role of general revelation is not merely a modern assertion to sidestep the “scandal of particularity.” Rather, conversations about general revelation are built on the foundation of long-standing engagement with philosophical categories of unbelief dating back to the patristic period. As the church continues to have sustained encounters with other religions, these earlier conversations prove useful in re-engaging how we can better dialogue with non-Christian faiths. The rich, nuanced reflections which are now emerging will, I am sure, provide a lasting contribution to Christian theology for centuries to come.