Two Books on Christianity and Other Religions

Recently I’ve come across two notable books about Christianity and other Religions.

Bob Robinson
Jesus and the Religions: Retrieving a Neglected Example for a Multi-Cultural World
Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2012.

Robinson looks at how Jesus in the Gospels related to “others” like Samaritans and Romans and how that should inform our own response to other religions in a pluralistic world.

Daniel Strange
Their Rock is Not Like Our Rock: A Theology of Religions
Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014.

Strange’s book is a detailed and systematic response to religious pluralism from a distinctively Reformed perspective. Strange’s provocative thesis, building on J.H. Bavinck, is that: “From the presupposition of an epistemologically authoritative biblical revelation, non-Christian religions are sovereignly directed, variegated and dynamic, collective human idolatrous responses to divine revelation behind which stand deceiving demonic forces. Being antithetically against yet parasitically dependent upon the truth of the Christian worldview, non-Christian religions are ‘subversively fulfilled’ in the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Both books in their own way are concerned with maintaining a christological exclusivism combined with a missiological imperative while also trying to get along with people of other religions.