Q. Many religions share a belief in God and offer similar moral guidelines. What essential belief(s) would you say sets the Christian faith apart from all other faiths?
A. The Christian faith is distinctive and even unique in many ways. But if I had to choose the most essential and distinctive affirmations of our faith, I would have to identify two all-important, closely connected realities which we confess each Sunday in the Nicene Creed: the Most Holy Trinity (whose feast we celebrate this Sunday, May 30) and the Incarnation.
No religion outside the Christian faith bears witness as we do that God is in Himself three co-equal, coeternal divine Persons in one Nature. And no other religion reveals that the Second Person of that Blessed Trinity, God the Son, became fully human in Jesus Christ to make our salvation possible. I think that any religion which denies either of these essential Christian affirmations cannot truly be called Christian.
