Christianity and Other Religions

Scripture focus

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

John 14:6 KJV

At a glance

Summary of the chapter

Deists pointed out that only a fraction of the world had heard the Christian gospel and used that fact to indict the God of Christianity as unjust or provincial. Rather than dismiss the challenge, Edwards spent much of his later career reading everything he could find on world religions — travel accounts, a translation of the Qur'an, Jesuit reports from China, studies of the Qabbalah — filling private notebooks with reflections on the relationship between Christ and the gods of the nations.

His central answer drew on the prisca theologia, an old apologetic tradition holding that true religious knowledge — monotheism, even hints of the Trinity — had been given to humanity at the beginning and then carried, in corrupted form, from Noah's righteous sons through the Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, and other ancient peoples. What Plato or Confucius got right, on this reading, was borrowed light rather than independent insight.

Edwards paired this historical explanation with his conviction that God continually speaks through nature and providence, his typology, and with a cautious, dispositional account of saving faith that left room for genuine, if unusual, works of grace outside the visible bounds of the church — without ever surrendering the unique, necessary place of Christ.

Key points

• Deist attacks on the “scandal of particularity” — the claim that a just God would not reveal himself to only a fraction of humanity — pushed Edwards to study world religions seriously rather than ignore them.
• He read widely in available sources on other religions, including a translation of the Qur'an, Jesuit accounts of China, and works on the Qabbalah and comparative mythology.
• Edwards's chief explanatory tool was the prisca theologia, the old idea that a true, if corrupted, revelation passed from Noah's sons down through the ancient Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, and others.
• He drew on earlier writers in this tradition, including Theophilus Gale and Ralph Cudworth, as well as his contemporaries Andrew Michael Ramsay and Philip Skelton.
• Edwards combined this historical account with his typological conviction that God speaks through nature and a cautious openness to unusual, Spirit-given faith beyond the visible church, without abandoning the necessity of Christ.

A line worth remembering

What is Plato but Moses speaking in the Attick language?

McClymond & McDermott The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, ch. 36

Related Scripture

• Acts 17:26-27
• Romans 1:19-20
• Genesis 9:1
• Romans 2:14-15

For reflection and discussion

1. How would you answer someone who argues that a good God would not reveal himself to only part of the human race?
2. What do you make of Edwards's claim that whatever is true and good in other religions is borrowed light rather than independent insight?
3. Where do you see Edwards holding together two convictions that can feel like they are in tension — that Christ is the only way, and that God has not left himself without witness among the nations?