The Christian message in the non-Christian world
Author: Kraemer
Reflection by John Lee
The main thesis of
Kraemer’s book, “The Christian message in the non-Christian world” is that the
Christian revelation is absolutely sui
generis, it is Gospel not empirical
Christianity, that is in a class by itself, apart from all other religions.
Kraemer’s argument is based on Biblical realism and emphasizes the uniqueness
of Christ, the necessity of the church, and the obligation to proclaim the
gospel to the whole world.
The fundamental
starting point of Kraemer’s theology is the unconditional recognition of God’s
self-revelation in Jesus Christ, as proclaimed to us in the Bible. Kraemer’s
main contention is that there is no continuity between the Christian faith and
non-Christian religions and the Christian faith does not fulfill them. However
Kraemer maintains that “revelation”, the self-disclosure of God, is not a
simple process of the divine mind communicating exceptional truth and insight
to the human mind, but is the profound and long-drawn struggle of God, who in
his revelation is ignored and neglected by man.
Kraemer attacks
the liberal ideal of religion as an aspect of culture and to the thought of
essential continuity between religions. The non-Christian religions are quite
irrelevant for the purpose of bringing to men true knowledge of God, or
salvation, and we cannot contemplate the possibility of cooperating with them
on any religious basis, hence Kraemer states that it is hazardous to indicate
concretely where God has revealed himself in the non-Christian religions.
Kraemer asserts
that while the Christian faith was the revelation of God, non-Christian
religions were human achievements; that
to talk of the Christian faith fulfilling the non-Christian religions or of the
missionary finding points of contact between the Christian faith and other
religions was absurd. The ultimate
truth for Kraemer is Jesus Christ, the revelation of God. The basis of
Christianity is God’s self-disclosure in Christ. Therefore he states that the
absolutely distinctive and peculiar and
unique element in Christianity is the “fact” of Christ (80). Christ is the
revelation in his own person, in other words he is himself God’s revelation.
Christ does not communicate truths; he is the truth.
Kraemer emphasizes
biblical realism and his starting point is the Bible as the revelation of God
in history. The presupposition here is that the relation between God and human
being is fundamentally defective and that it can only be restored by divine initiative.
Kraemer believes that the realism of the Bible proclaims and asserts realities.
It does not intend to present a world view but rather it challenges man in his
total being to confront himself with these realities. Kraemer endorses
Barth’s view that the non-Christian religions are “un-faith” and acts of rebellion against God. However, while
rejecting Barth’s general position as “too simplistic and obvious to be
satisfying in dealing with this complicated and dialectic subject, Kraemer
calls for the priority of biblical faith as the normative standard for judging
the truth of religion (193).
Unlike Barth,
Kraemer accepts general revelation; that God reveals himself outside Jesus. But
for him, it has no soteriological significance. Kraemer’s view is that it is
not permissible to regard general revelation or natural theology and the
revelation of Christ as if they are of the same type and quality, or that they
differ in degree rather than kind (122-23). Neither is it permissible to regard
general revelation as preparation for the fullness of revelation in Christ.
Therefore he says that “Here Biblical realism demonstrates again its deep and
sound sense of reality, because it testifies that God’s revelation in “general
revelation” is just as well an object of faith as that in “special revelation”
(125). He rejects the idea that natural theology and Christian revelation from
one harmonious system of thought on the assumption that one is a preparation
for other.
Kraemer presents
the analysis of the relation between Christianity and other religions. Hinduism
is full of paradox. It has no order, no consistency, no criterion, hence is
regarded as “the outstanding embodiment of primitive apprehension of existence
and of naturalistic monism” (160). Islam, in its constitutive elements and
apprehensions, must be called a superficial religion. In Islam, there is a
stubborn refusal to open the mind towards another spiritual world. Kraemer
claims that Islam might be called a religion that has almost no questions and
no answers, thus regards Islam as a religious and social unit, with legalistic
connotations (220).
For Kraemer, all
religions, including to a great extent Christianity, are systems of
self-justification and self-redemption and ultimately erroneous. There is no
true religion. There exists a radical distinction between his revelation and
the whole range of human religion, and there is complete “discontinuity.”
Therefore it is impossible to make any kind of comparison between Christianity
and any other religion, hence there is no point of contact and there are no
bridges from human religious consciousness to Christ (131ff).
Kraemer’s theory
sets the concept “witness” of Christians to men of other faiths, however it
lacks the concept of “encounter” thus is difficult to engage into a dialogue in
which mutual respect is a basic assumption.
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