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The true light that enlightens everyone was coming into the world.
John 1:9

Each week, on the "Religion Page" of the Saturday Star, there is a "Multifaith Calendar" which lists the days during the coming week which have importance for the different religions of the world. Today, as we celebrate "Gaudete Sunday," on which, in some churches, the somber purple color is replaced by a more festive hue of rose, the Jains observe a day of fasting, silence, and meditation on the five holy beings. Ten days from now we celebrate the birth of Christ; earlier in the month Buddhists observed the birth of the Buddha.

For many Christians, what goes on in other religions is strictly irrelevant, since Christ is "the only way," and our New Testament scriptures seem to support this conviction. But it is a conviction which is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain in the multi-cultural environment in which we live.
The Fourth Gospel might seem an unlikely source for any positive implications for "other religions." After all, the Johannine Christ declares, "No one comes to the Father but by me" (John 14:6). And yet, in the hymn with which the evangelist introduces his gospel, he appears to undercut his own conscious exclusivism.

Of the four strophes of the hymn, only the last one contains a specifically Christian affirmation (John 1:17). The first strophe affirms the existence of the Word with God "in the beginning," that is, before creation (vv.1-2). The second strophe declares that everything created by God was made in and through the Word (v.3), so that eternal life is the Word’s creative gift to humankind (v.4). The darkness of the world seeks to overcome the light of life (an allusion to the Fall), but the light continues to shine (v.5). In strophe 3 the Word’s presence in the world gives to those who accept it the power to become God’s children (vv.10-12).

These statements concerning the role of the Word in creation and in the world are paralleled in Jewish wisdom literature and are clearly mythological in character: they are products of the creative imagination, not detached reports of observable events. The evangelist’s use of such mythic material suggests that "objective" statements about Jesus, that is, neutral accounts of his words and deeds, are inadequate to express the "truth" about him.

Only the symbolic language of mythology can give universal meaning to a historically particular person and set of events. The evangelist’s veneration of Jesus arises out of the psychic reality of the religious symbol. This points to an underground connection between Christianity and other world religions, which are equally dependent upon mythic speech.

Whatever their differences in doctrine, all religions have one thing in common: their use of the symbol to make available to the conscious mind the transformative energy of the pious affections.

December 15, 2002

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