What is unique about Christianity in comparison with other religions? We wish to point out two hallmark elements: Christocentrism and emphasis on love. Christianity centers around a very particular person, Jesus the Christ, and it emphasizes the virtue of a joyful and unconditional love, triggered by encounter with the person of Jesus.
� Monotheistic Christianity is substantially different from monotheistic Islam and Judaism in that Christianity is based on an incarnated monotheism: God is present in and through the very flesh of Jesus. Unlike the mythical gods of Greek and Roman polytheism, Jesus is historical: a person whose birth and life and death were bounded by the observable limits of time and space. Jesus reveals that the Christian God is personal, unlike the impersonal principle Brahminism within some forms of Hinduism. Through Jesus, the person, the radical separation between God and human beings is bridged; yet, unlike the monism or a radical mysticism as in some branches of Buddhism, God and the human person are distinct, maintain their own individuality. Jesus the person also reveals the God of Christianity is concerned about human beings, and that concern is exercised in human history and in the material world. Salvation, in light of the incarnation, is the freedom to be a human person and to relate lovingly with other human persons. Jesus the historical person reveals all of this.
� Thus the Gospels point not to a system (as does Marxism) or to an ethical code (as does Confucianism) but to a person, Jesus the Christ, who is his very teaching. As guide and norm, Jesus reduces all commandments to the commandment of love (Mt. 22:34-40). Understood from Jesus teaching and from his life, loving is not simply one virtue among others, it is the basic criterion for all virtues, of all principles, and of all forms of human behavior. This love is not simply a passive sentimentality but a demanding discipline as described by St. Paul (I Cor 13). Christian love is both and attitude and action of good will directed toward all, most especially toward those in need and near to us, as exemplified in the parable of the good Samaritan. In sum, Christianity tells us that our relationship with God is impossible without a loving relationship with other persons.
