ABSTRACT

It is fairly well known that the New Testament contains such passagesas that in which Jesus says “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; noone comes to the Father but by me.”1 One reads that “he who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”2 St Peter asserted “There is salvation in no one else [but Jesus Christ], for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”3 It is less well known that the other religious traditions we have discussed have similar emphases. The Advaita Vedantin Shankara, for example, forthrightly says that “if the soul . . . is not considered to possess fundamental unity with Brahman – an identity to be realized by knowledge – there is not any chance of its obtaining final release.”4 A text from the Jaina Sutras bluntly tells us that

Those who do not know all things by kevala [knowledge], but who being ignorant teach a law [of their own], are lost themselves, and work the ruin of others in this dreadful, boundless Circle of Births. Those who know all things by the full Kevala knowledge, and who are practicing meditation and teach the whole law, are themselves saved and save others.