In a short but pithy article entitled ‘Christ's uniqueness’, which appeared recently in an issue of the publication ‘Reform’, Professor John Hick outlines very compactly one of his latest presentations against the traditional Christian acceptance of Jesus' theological pre-eminence. My paper is not intended to present a full-blown argument either in defence or criticism of ‘the uniqueness of Christ’ (Except where another sense is clear, I use ‘Jesus’ and ‘Christ’ throughout as they are commonly used, viz. as proper names referring to one and the same person). More directly, its aim is to point out what appear to be serious objections to a view that is gaining increasing support from thinkers who study the inter-relations between the world religions at various levels; and which for the committed Christian raises fundamental issues any seraiousminded believer, scholar or layman, must eventually face. Professor Hick repeats and summarises here a position he discusses at length elsewhere, and perhaps it is fitting that the stance we shall now examine will be made in the context of a presentation of one of its leading exponents.

We do not possess a large amount of information about the worship of Christians in the early days of the church and most of what we do comes from First Corinthians. In it Paul answers various questions raised by the Corinthians, among them one about spiritual gifts. We ought probably to envisage a small group meeting in a house (cf. 1 Cor. 16.19; there would have been a number of such ‘house-churches’ in Corinth). In these meetings the Christians present made various contributions to the worship according to their abilities, or, more correctly, their spiritual gifts, charismata.

The thinkers of old Israel, whether Psalmists, historians or teachers of Wisdom, were supremely serene and confident men. Their world was established, and could not be moved (1 Sam. 2.8; Ps. 93.1); God's favour and victory were with his people (Deut. 33.26f); his covenant was benign and Israel's king reigned in Zion (Ps. 72.17f; 133); and everyone but the fool knew his proper place and was content, and life's rewards seemed fair and consistent (1 Kings 4.25; Prov. 10.14–15; 12.9; 13.14–16; 14.1, 30 etc.). Evil and tragedy were present, but they were not allowed to pose any ultimate problem, since they were known to be firmly under God's control and part and parcel of the divine economy (Gen. 45.5; 2 Sam. 17.14; Ps. 30.6 (Engl. 5); 73.16–17). Under the double impact of Assyrian imperial advance and of internal social disintegration in the eighth and seventh centuries, this optimistic Weltanschauung was rudely shattered. The prophetic movement, hitherto nonconformist and not highly regarded by those who mattered, came into its own, sounding ever more loudly sour and pessimistic notes that had rarely been heard in Israel before (Amos 5.18f; Mic. 6.1–2; Isa. 5.18f; Zeph. 2.15; Jer. 6.16f; 8.8f etc.). It deeply affected the historians who were responsible for the Deuteronomistic writings,2 but of more direct concern to us, it had a pervasive influence on the Wisdom tradition as well.3 This can be traced in an increasing emphasis upon the need for humble submission to God's will in the face of life's enigmas.

Traditionally Romans 8.26 has been a text to which at least some Pentecostals have appealed as scriptural support for the practice of speaking in tongues. However, this interpretation has by no means found favour with all commentators: Adolf Schlatter explicitly denies it, arguing that (a) the powerlessness that is described here is not an affliction peculiar to a few individuals but is the mark of all Christian prayer, whereas speaking with tongues is considered by Paul to be a gift given to certain individuals only, (b) it is a gift of thanksgiving and of singing of God's secrets, not of groaning, and (c) it is not ‘unspeakable’, for some interpreted it.2 Rather, he argues, the groaning here is wordless, but yet intercessory. Many commentators share Schlatter's view that Paul's language here does not fit the phenomenon of glossolalia: so Dodd refers to an ‘inarticulate aspiration’ that expresses itself in ‘sighs that are beyond words’, and Barrett explicitly prefers to see here a reference to an immediate communion between the ‘Spirit (-filled worshipper) and God’ which needs no spoken word.