The Exclusive Character of Christianity

Alvin Schmidt emphasizes some critically important and timely matters concerning the meaning of faith in his little book Faith Misused: Why Christianity Is Not Just Another Religion, just published by Concordia Publishing House. I have been an online adjunct professor at a nearby community college for a dozen years or so. One of the units in the Philosophy 101 class that I teach has to do with religion, and one of the discussion starters asks, “What makes your own religion (or lack of religion) worth following? Do you know? Is a leap of faith required?” Students then discuss, and I find, to my dismay, that the great majority of them say that such a leap is indeed required. They tend to believe that matters of faith and religion cannot be proved. They essentially follow the existentialist notion that one must leap, as it were, into the darkness and hope Someone catches you. That, to them, is what faith is all about, even though most of them consider themselves Christian. Schmidt counters, as do I, that no leap is required at all in Christianity. It is, rather, with absolute certainty that we confess the faith, believing and following the reasoning of St. Luke, who in Acts 1 declares that Jesus “showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.” Christianity, in other words, can certainly be proven, as also St. Thomas joyfully learned upon his inspection of Christ on the Sunday after Easter with an exuberant cry, “My Lord and my God!” So also the Evangelist St. John, who gave us this account of Thomas, himself wrote emphatically, “Many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name” (St. John 20:30-31). Or again, Peter and John declared to the authorities who told them to stop preaching, “we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). Schmidt emphasizes these and other passages to demonstrate the irrefutability of the Christian faith. He argues from the Aristotelian logic of irrefutable evidence.

Schmidt thus can easily contrast this with the myriad of other religions who do not do this. He singles out by way of example Islam and Mormonism, showing that their founders (Muhammed and Joseph Smith respectively) cannot corroborate their claims to have received their knowledge somehow from God. There were no eyewitnesses at all. In their case one must indeed leap into the darkness, and there is in fact no plausible reason one should.

Schmidt’s discussion of this distinctive feature of Christianity is especially helpful given the current milieu, a society many of whose movers want nothing to do with history and proof, finding little use for such things, even seeking to erase them altogether. Though he does not venture to discuss this, it is, I think, another benefit to be gained from his emphasis.

And this is why I agree wholeheartedly with the subtitle of his book and where it leads him: “Why Christianity Is Not Just Another Religion.”

What he hasn’t quite convinced me of, on the other hand, is the title itself: “Faith Misused.”

On the one hand Schmidt rightly and helpfully notes that it is technically incorrect for a Christian to say, “I believe that Christ rose from the dead’, explaining how “this statement falsely indicates that Christ’s resurrection is only a matter of faith, ignoring that the faith of Christians in the New Testament includes their knowing the eyewitness reports of Christ’s apostles” (77-78, emphasis original). Further, “to accept Christ’s resurrection from the dead does not require faith” (76). As Schmidt reminds us, these things are reflected in our Creed, in which we declare, “I believe in Jesus Christ . . . [who] rose from the dead.” Yet I find it difficult to follow his insistence that it is also technically incorrect to refer to our religion as “the Christian faith.” He insists even while acknowledging that that Augustine and Luther used the phrase (106). He suggests that Augustine did so without realizing “what the appellation implied” and that Luther “may have unthinkingly followed Augustine’s influence” in using the term (121). Though it is true that this phrase does not occur in the New Testament, it is not necessarily true that the term ‘the Christian faith’, as opposed to ‘the Christian religion’ which Schmidt prefers, “is actually a misuse of the New Testament’s exclusive use of faith” (105), though certainly we can agree that faith for, say, a Muslim, is altogether a different kind of faith than ours. Not only what a Muslim believes, but his basis for believing what he believes is, as it were, a house built on straw. But Schmidt makes a major thrust of his entire work an argument that we imply what we ought not imply when we use the term because we are thus suggesting there are other valid kinds of faith than that which is Christian. To say we do is nonetheless not really a logical conclusion he is entitled to make. One might also want to say, for instance, that the phrase “the Triune God” somehow implies that there are other gods that are not triune, since a Muslim’s concept of God is also utterly different than ours. But by his reasoning, it seems to me, one ought not use that phrase either, because we certainly do not thereby mean to imply that there are non-Christian religions who use and value the concept of ‘god’ in the same way we do. Saying “the Triune God” certainly does not imply that there are others, and similarly I fail to see how he can say that phrase “the Christian faith” somehow implies that other “faiths” have the same definition of faith. So when Schmidt holds that “the appellation ‘the Christian faith’ logically implies . . . that non-Christian religions also use and value the concept of faith” in the same way we do (105), he loses me.

In fact, though clearly Christianity has an exclusive character and is the only true faith, that doesn’t mean the New Testament uses the term “faith” exclusively to refer to true faith. St. Paul refers to a kind of “faith” that could remove mountains but is worthless (I Corinthians 13:2), and similarly James speaks of a “faith” that does not have works and therefore cannot save (James 2:14). James goes on to say that such a kind of “faith,” being without works, is dead (James 2:20). These clear instances of a use of the term to refer to something other than true faith are New Testament rebuttals to Schmidt’s insistence that the New Testament only uses “faith” to refer to Christian faith.

We can heartily agree that non-Christian religions do not use the term faith in the same way that we do, and this point needs emphasizing, as Schmidt has done admirably, but I see no point in taking the matter further. Yet he drives home his point, insisting that

this appellation [has resulted] in non-Christian religions appending the word faith to their religion’s formal name, thereby hijacking the New Testament’s exclusive faith of Christians. History shows this hijacking has indeed taken place, for we now hear and read of “the Buddhist faith,” “the Islamic faith,” “the Hindu faith,” “the Mormon faith,” and so on. (121)

It could as easily be said that their kind of faith is different, even radically different, than ours. But the notion of hijacking (a term he uses repeatedly) suggests to me that a nefarious and intentional deception has taken place, for which he has elicited no evidence. I’d suggest he send this hobbyhorse away, especially because he has such a valuable contribution to make otherwise.

This contribution is so valuable that I still recommend this book. While the matter of his title, Faith Misused, is not convincing, nonetheless his subtitle, Why Christianity Is Not Just Another Religion is well worth the emphasis he has given it.

Alvin J. Schmidt, Faith Misused: Why Christianity Is Not Just Another Religion. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2022. 143 pages. Softcover. $15.99.