My Dear People, 

Peter and John have been taken before the Sanhedrin (the Jewish combination Congress and Supreme Court) and are actually being tried for healing a man in the name of Jesus! This reminds us of Christians in contemporary society being prosecuted for doing what is right, e.g., fighting for the lives of the unborn, or speaking the truth about marriage. 

Peter Says it is “by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth” that the crippled man was healed. The “Name” motif runs strongly through this reading. The concept and reality of the Name of God Himself; the relation of God’s Name to Moses, is essentially the revelation of God’s own self to Moses (Exod. 3). Later in Israel’s history, God will make his Name dwell in the Temple, which is virtually the same as saying God’s own presence will inhabit the Temple. 

The Name of God continues to be important in the New Testament as well.  In this passage from Acts we are seeing that Jesus Christ of Nazareth has become God’s “Name,” i.e., the expression of his power and presence. We can almost say that the Name of God in the Old Testament is all but the same as his “Word,” and that both “Name” and “Word” are ultimately the Second Person of the Trinity.

So, the fact that this man is healed “in the Name of Jesus” implies that “Jesus” is “the Name of the Lord,” (cf. Pss. 116.4 13,17; 118:10-12,26) and, therefore, Jesus is divine. Peter  knows most will not accept this message, so he continues with a quote from Psalm 118: “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (v. 22). In other words, “Jesus, the rock that you consider an offense, an inconvenient cause of stumbling, has, in fact, become the foundation stone of the Temple of God.” The whole building metaphor, after all, has the Temple, specifically in view. The building of which Jesus is the “cornerstone”—that is, the first stone laid, crucial for the stability of the whole structure—is the Temple of God, built not of stone but of persons. 

St. Peter concludes his message with this line: “There is no salvation through anyone else nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.”

This is the line that offends our modern pluralism. Isn’t it arrogant for Peter to claim that Jesus is the sole way to salvation? I do not think it is, once we understand what “salvation” is. 

“Salvation” as defined by Jesus and the Church is not an eternity in a garden of sensual delights. Rather, salvation is “to share the very life of God.” It is to participate in the divine nature, to become a “child” or “son” of God and enjoy Him forever. 

The founders of other major world religions do not even claim to offer a way to this salvation. The Buddha taught that the problems of human existence were the illusion of our selfhood, and Buddha offers a way we could lose this illusion and thus essentially cease to exist as personal beings. This is not what Christians mean by salvation.

Joseph Smith taught that each of us could become a deity ourselves, complete with our own planet/solar system to govern and populate. Each of us becomes a “god” with a small “g.” 

This is not what Christians mean by salvation. 

Mohammed taught a way of obedience to a nonpersonal god, “Allah,” who would reward those who were his obedient servants in this life by granting them an afterlife of sensual pleasure and comfort. He did not offer divine sonship, nor a participation in the divine nature, which were and are blasphemous in Islamic theology. This, too, is not what Christians mean by salvation. 

Christians know little or nothing about other religions, and the rest of the world’s religious practices. Assuming that Mohammed, Buddha, Zoroaster, etc. basically taught the same thing as Jesus, functioned the same as Jesus for their followers, and promised the same things as Jesus to their followers, is a kind of cultural imperialism that imposes one’s own way of thinking on the rest of the world. 

True interreligious dialogue seeks to understand how others think, and how they experience their religions. When we do this, we realize that, in addition to certain similarities, there are also radical and fundamental differences between the aims and objectives of these different belief systems. And once we see the differences, we realize that Jesus’ claims aren’t in the least arrogant, but simply a statement of incontrovertible fact. Jesus is the only founder of a world religion who even claimed to offer a way to be a child of the God who created the universe. Jesus is the only way to the Father, because He’s the only one who even teaches that God the Creator is our Father. 

If there are three vendors on a street in a marketplace, one selling bananas, one selling oranges, and one selling apples, it is not arrogant for the banana merchant to proclaim, “I am the only way to bananas!” 

Apologies for the humble analogy, but likewise it is not arrogant for Peter to proclaim on behalf of Christ, “Nor is there any other name. . . by which we are to be saved!”—provided we understand what it is to be “saved” according to Jesus and the Apostles. 

[Sources from Reflection on Sunday Mass Reading By John Bergsma]

Yours in Christ.

Fr. Vincent Clemente