Six Areas Indicating Jesus’ Uniqueness

Moving beyond these preliminary matters, we will now examine a half-dozen areas that indicate that several of Jesus’ major teachings and actions were unparalleled in religious terms. Comparisons will be made to what we know regarding several non-Christian founders of other major world religions, too. But our purpose in this volume is to contrast the Christian message at each of these points with other philosophical and religious declarations or actions, to test if the nature of Jesus’ teachings and actions indeed were unmatched. The contention and overall theme from this point onwards is that the world religions do not really even come close to rivaling the singularity of Jesus’ claims.

However, note that it is not our purpose in this volume to actually establish or demonstrate the historical or other truth of these areas, especially since that would be a much longer treatise by itself. Not having ignored this subject, however, many of my other books have argued these historical theses in great detail.9 Our chief intention, then, is to inquire whether the major non-Christian religious founders even made the most unique statements that Jesus did in the first place. Along the way, we will even pursue several occasions when those who actually hold to the truth of these different world religions and philosophies nonetheless still even agree with our general theme!

Endnotes

9 For just one example, see especially Gary R. Habermas, The Risen Jesus and Future Hope (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefied, 2003), especially chapters 1-5, 10.