SORTS OF RELIGION 25loves, so we ought to love unselfishly. Human individuality is real, not
illusory, and it is good not evil, that individuals exist. God loves all persons
in the sense of willing their ultimate good and acting for it. Central to
being made in God’s image is having the capacity for loving others and
oneself in the sense of willing their and our ultimate good and acting for it.
Love in this sense is primarily volitional, not primarily emotional. God is
providential in the sense of governing the course of history and moving it
toward the Kingdom of God, so that time is real and the historical process is
real and one-directional (not cyclical).^6 It is a good, not an evil, that there
are temporal and historical events. God is holy both in the sense of being
unique, alone worthy of being worshipped, and of being morally pure or
righteous. Thus worship is not a preliminary religious experience to be
later transcended; its appropriateness is built into the nature of the
distinction between Creator and creature, which is not a dissolvable
distinction. As God is righteous, God judges sin. Sin is freely performed
action that violates God’s moral law; sin also is a defect of our nature due to
our living in a world in which sinful actions proliferate. Sin prevents one’s
realizing his or her nature as made in God’s image. Since God loves all
persons, God hates what harms persons, and hence hates sin. Intolerance of
sin is not opposed to, but follows from, the nature of divine love. Thus
human sin and guilt are real, not illusory, and it is better that persons act
freely and exercise moral agency than that they be made unable to sin. The
basic religious problem is sin, and the deepest religious need is for
forgiveness. Forgiveness is provided by God’s grace or unmerited favor; it
is not earned by human effort. God has acted in history at real times and in
real places to reveal information that otherwise we would not have had and
to act on our behalf. Central religious doctrines make essential reference to
certain persons and events. Religious knowledge, at least in part, is gained
through revelation rather than through reflection, meditation, self-
abasement, or the like.
Much or all of this applies as well to Judaism and Islam, at least in their
more orthodox varieties. What is distinct about Christianity, not
surprisingly, is the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. In the Apostle
Paul’s summary of the basic Christian Gospel, he tells his audience: “I
delivered unto you what I also received, that Christ died for our sins
according to the Scriptures, and was buried, and rose again from the dead,
according to the Scriptures.”^7 That Christ lived sinlessly, that Christ died
“the Just for the Unjust in order to bring us to God,” that “Christ, who
knew no sin, was made to be sin for us,” that “Christ bore our sins in his
own body on the tree,” and that Christ bodily rose from the dead, are
claims central to – indeed, they are – the Christian Gospel, the content of
the Christian message.