A friend of mine from seminary rejects Christian claims of exclusivity because he says it amounts to God giving humanity a multiple choice test, whose “correct” answer is essentially arbitrary, with heaven and hell on the line. With so many religions that are similar in so many ways, would God really damn us just for happening to pick the wrong one?

Now personally, I think God can do what God wants; adjusting our theology until God satisfies our sensibilities only guarantees that we’re worshiping a God we have essentially invented, so I don’t believe in ruling out these kinds of things too quickly.

Yet my friend’s question is legitimate: How is the traditional Christian belief, offering heaven to those who choose Jesus and hell to those who choose some other religion, different than an unfair multiple choice test? Is there any clear reason a person should be expected to choose Christianity over some other religion?

I don’t have a full answer, and I’ll admit at the outset that my argument will sidestep the nuances of what salvation can mean in different religions. However, I want to look at a passage from Romans where I think Paul explains why the Christian faith is a particular kind of faith and why this particular kind of faith is necessary for the kind of salvation that is promised in Christ.

The text is Romans 4:13-25:

For it was not through the law that Abraham (or his seed) received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness of faith. For if the heirs [were determined] through the law, then faith would be emptied and the promise would be done away with. After all, the law produces wrath. (Though where there is no law, neither is there transgression [of that law].)

Therefore, [heirs were determined] from faith, so that [they would be determined] by grace, and so that the promise would be confirmed to every seed, not only to those of the law, but also to those of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all –– just as it is written, “I will make you father of many nations,” at which point [Abraham] put his faith in the God who brings to life those who are dead and calls the things that don’t exist as if they do.

This is the man who, with hope upon hope, had faith that he would become father of many nations according to what had been said, “Thus shall your seed be.” And he didn’t weaken in faith even though he knew [the state of] his own body, which had already died, being about a hundred years old; and he also knew that Sarah, the mother, was dead as well. But he did not waver by losing faith in the promise of God, but was strengthened by faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that he was able to do what had been promised. Therefore indeed “it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”

But it was not written for him alone that “it was reckoned to him,” but also for us, to whom it would later be reckoned, to those who have faith in the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead –– Jesus, who was handed over for our mistakes and was raised for our righteousness.

What strikes me here is that Abraham’s faith, as Paul describes it in this passage, wasn’t just a general kind of faith that God existed, or that God is good, or even that God would keep God’s promise. It was faith in the resurrection from the dead.

Translations tend to obscure this point by translating Sarah’s condition as “barrenness,” which is surely what Paul meant but which hides the fact that the word Paul uses for her condition is simply deadness. Paul could have used the word barren easily enough, just as he could have referred to Abraham simply as old.

I think the reason he didn’t is that it wasn’t enough to say that Abraham’s faith was in a God who can overcome old age or barrenness or long odds or anything else –– except for one thing: bodily death.

Jesus wasn’t rescued from the cross; he was raised from the dead, and in order for our faith to be like Abraham’s, Paul is claiming, both our faith and Abraham’s must be faith in a God who raises the dead.

Just checking the right box?

Certain streams of Christian tradition do appear to treat faith as a box-checking exercise, but I’m arguing here that Paul would reject such a position. And he wouldn’t just reject it with the arguments we most often make today, that faith in God is a relationship rather than a religion, or anything like that.

What is key, at least in this passage, is that there is an explicit connection between what we have faith in and what we receive. The logic is not, “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, so I will go to heaven;” instead, it is, “I believe that God raised Jesus from the dead, so God will raise me from the dead.” Whoever has faith in the one who brought about Christ’s resurrection will receive that same resurrection.

Resurrection and rebirth, in certain senses, were hardly rare ideas in the religions of antiquity. However, they typically made reference to cyclical events such as the seasons of the year. People had plenty of experience with death and new life, but there was little in their experience to make them expect a one-time resurrection of the kind Paul described, and this explains the resistance Paul is said to have met among Greeks in Acts 17:32.

People might suggest today that resurrection happens every time a new generation replaces another, but that kind of cycle just belies the finality of death: people who die have to be replaced, because they do not return from the dead, almost without exception.

And there’s the point. Paul believed that Jesus rose from the dead, in a particular place at a particular time, and many witnesses testified to it. I can’t prove that Christianity is the only true religion, but I can point (with Paul) to a very particular way in which the faith we are called to is not arbitrary, but is wrapped up in the kind of salvation we hope to receive. We will receive our resurrection because we have faith in Jesus’s.

Many will argue on naturalistic grounds that a dead person, after a certain point, simply cannot be raised. That may be the case. But for those who would deny that Jesus could have risen from the dead, I’m not quite sure what kind of God they’re worshipping or what kind of salvation beyond death they think there is to be had.