One of the most popular, plausible, and at the same time one of the most pernicious theories about religion at the present day is the theory which teaches that a man may be quite indifferent to what Christian creed he belongs, provided he be a good man after his own fashion. This theory may be called by some Latitudinarianism, by others Liberalism in religion, by others, again, Indifferentism. Whatever name we give it, it means simply the doctrine that one religion is as good as another, or that all creeds are equally agreeable in the eyes of God. Its advocates say, and say in the plainest terms, that God does not care what religion His creatures profess, provided they live up to and act consistently with the one which they have embraced, or the one which has been handed down to them by family tradition. They contend, in fact, that men may claim as large a measure of liberty in choosing the creed they profess as in choosing their place of residence or their family doctor. Instead of making religious belief a matter of duty, they, on the contrary, make it a matter of choice, taste, sentiment, and inclination. They act and speak and think, or at least affect to think, that while God holds up, as it were, before men’s minds certain doctrines which He commands to be believed, men are, nevertheless, free to put aside those doctrines and to choose other doctrines, even contradictory ones, in their stead. Their reasoning, when analysed, must force them inevitably to the conclusion that, although the voice of the God of everlasting truth has declared something to be true, they are at liberty to believe it to be false; and that while that same unerring voice proclaims some statement to be false, they, in the enjoyment of the fulness of their right of private judgment, are free to look upon it as true. Liberty of choice with regard to forms of Christian belief means nothing less than this.

Does this theory, which eloquent sophistry has made so plausible, deserve the popularity which it has attained, and which has given it such a hold on the mind of the multitude ? No; so far from deserving the approbation, it does not deserve even the toleration of any reasonable man. Let us weigh it in the balance of truth. Let us look at it in the light of right reason and of Divine revelation, and we shall find that it contradicts at once man’s reason and God’s revelation.

In this chapter we shall deal with it as a contradiction of reason.

God being what He is, that is, the God of eternal truth, He cannot be indifferent as to whether His people believe this particular creed or some other creed that contradicts it. To say that He does not care what form of Christianity they profess is exactly equivalent to saying that He does not care whether they believe what is true or what is false. For the different creeds which now exist, and which, all of them, press their claim on the homage of man’s mind, contradict each other; and contradict each other not merely in small items of belief, but even in doctrines which are commonly looked upon as fundamental by those belonging to any Christian denomination. One Church teaches that Christ is truly, really, and substantially present in the sacrament of the Eucharist; another Church teaches that He is not truly present in the sacrament of the Eucharist. One Church teaches that the priest has power to forgive the grievous sins committed after baptism; another Church teaches that the priest has not power to forgive the grievous sins committed after baptism. One Church holds that the Pope has universal spiritual jurisdiction over the whole world, and that his utterances are infallible when he speaks on faith and morals in certain given circumstances; other Churches maintain that the Pope has not universal spiritual jurisdiction over the whole world, and that his utterances are not infallible in those circumstances in which members of the Roman Catholic communion say they are infallible.

Now, here are statements, and here are contradictory statements, and contradictory statements in matters of great moment — in doctrines which touch even the very foundations of faith. The voice of reason is peremptory and emphatic. It proclaims, in a tone that cannot be mistaken, that the creed which affirms these propositions, and the creed which denies them, cannot be both true. Two statements that contradict each other cannot both be true at once. One only can be true, the other must be false; and the evident truth of one establishes the evident falsehood of the other. To say, therefore, that God does not care whether His people profess this religion or that other religion which is in contradictory opposition to it, is exactly the same as to say that He does not care whether they believe truth or falsehood.

Now, philosophy (which is a science of reason) demonstrates that veracity, or essential truthfulness, is one of God’s attributes. In virtue of this essential attribute, God not only loves truth, but loves truth of necessity; and not only hates falsehood, but must, as a law of His being, bear an undying, an eternal hatred to it. And hence, to affirm that He leaves people free to believe what is true or what is false, as they choose, is nothing short of a blasphemy against His attribute of essential truthfulness. The moment we affirm that one religion is as good as another, and that it is a matter of indifference with God what form of Christian belief men adopt, that moment we are hurried inevitably into the blasphemous conclusion that He is not more glorified by the profession of the doctrines which He Himself has revealed, than He is by the profession of those false theories of men which contradict them. If He has condescended to reveal from on high one definite religion (and all professing Christians freely admit that He has done so), surely He cannot be indifferent whether that one definite religion which He has thus revealed be believed, or some other religion which is in open, palpable opposition to it.

This statement, which is clear enough in its bare enunciation, will become still more clear in the light of the following illustrations. We read in the Old Testament that when the Israelites, in their journey through the desert, had reached the wilderness of Sinai, having the mountain of Sinai over against them, the time was come when God was to make known the Ten Commandments, and to have a tabernacle and an ark constructed for His worship. It was on that memorable occasion He revealed to Moses the precise plan according to which both tabernacle and ark were to be made. He was not content with describing the general dimensions, such as the length, the breadth, the height: He went down to the most minute details. He specified the particular kind of wood of which both were to be made — i.e., Setim wood. He specified also the particular way in which they were to be overlaid with gold; and He added the other precious materials which were to be used in their decoration. No human architect could enter more minutely into details, in giving a design for some earthly structure, that the great Divine Architect did on that occasion, when there was question of giving the plan after which His ark and tabernacle were to be fashioned. And if He was so explicit in the directions He gave, it was simply because He meant to show that He would not leave any room for the promptings of man’s imagination, fancy, or private judgment in the construction of those sacred appurtenances for His worship. Hence, he charged Moses, in words on which He laid all the emphasis His Divine Voice could command, to keep to and not to depart in the least item from the plan which had been revealed to him. ” Look,” He said, “and make it” (the ark) “according to the pattern which was shown thee in the mount” (Exod. xxv. 40).

Now let us suppose that as soon as Moses had gone down from the mountain, he had begun to make the tabernacle and the ark, not according to the plan which had been divinely revealed to him, but according to a plan struck out of his own head, would God have sanctioned the change? If he (Moses) had departed from the pattern thus divinely shown to him, and shown to him in such minute, precise, definite detail, and had constructed tabernacle and ark according to the dictates of his own private judgment, God would not have recognised either as the thing which He had commanded to be made. And surely we cannot say that the God of infinite knowledge, of infinite wisdom, of eternal truth, is more concerned about the length and breadth of a material thing than about those momentous truths which go to build up the noble, majestic structure of His religion.

The intercourse of Moses with God on the mountain furnishes us with another illustration which is quite as much to the point. It directs our thoughts in the same channel. It was there that God gave to him, written with His own finger on tables of stone, those Ten Commandments which were to form the basis of all moral law. He directed Him to make these Commandments known to the people. Such was the commission given to Moses, and such the message he was to announce. His work was marked out for him. He was not the maker of the law ; he was but the vehicle by which it was to pass to the people. When he received those binding precepts from the hands of that great Sovereign Lord and Creator to whom man owed both the homage of the mind and the service of the body, he was not at liberty to put them aside, and give to the people precepts of his own making He had no power to change the law, of which those precepts were the expression. He could not add to it; he could not take away from it. He was bound to give it to the people as he himself received it, in all its purity, integrity, and definiteness. On the other hand, similar obligations rested on the people as soon as the promulgation of those precepts reached them. When they heard them from the lips of Moses, who announced them in the name of God. whose representative he was, they were not free to depart from them, and to frame for themselves other precepts which would be more in harmony with their natural inclinations. No; there was the Divine code, there the expression of God’s law for man, clear, distinct, definite; and man was bound to follow it, and forbidden to follow any that was at variance with it. Now, Moses appeared in the Old Dispensation as the oracle of Divine Truth to those of whom he was the chief, as the medium of that partial revelation which God then vouchsafed to make to His people, Jesus Christ appeared in the New Dispensation, when the fulness of time was come, to reveal additional doctrines to the world — doctrines immeasurably more important. And if those who lived in the centuries which intervened between the days of Moses and the Incarnation were obliged to adhere to the portion of revelation made to them through the lips of that Great Lawgiver, surely the people of the present Dispensation are as strictly obliged to embrace and adhere to that religion, when it has been enlarged, completed, and perfected by God’s own Incarnate Son, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

The foregoing arguments may be summed up in these two sentences: 1st, Right reason can never sanction contradiction, and, therefore, can never sanction Indifferentism; 2nd, If God does not allow any change to be made in the plan He gives for the construction of a material sanctuary for His worship, it is against all reason to hold that He will allow any change to be made in the doctrines which teach in what His true worship consists— that is, in the truths He wishes to be believed and the laws He wishes to be fulfilled.

Taken from ~ Is one religion as good as another?
by MacLaughlin, John, Rev