One of the most difficult theological questions Christians face today is the fate of the unevangelized. The reason this question is so difficult is that it strikes at the heart of two pillars of Christian truth. The first is that God is a God of love who wills all of his creatures to be saved. This truth, despite some Calvinists protests which I can already hear ringing in the background, is sufficiently attested to in scripture. There is the famous statement of God's love: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life." To interpret this verse as applying to only a certain number of people, say a predestined elect, one has to do quite a bit of mental gymnastics in his or her interpretation of "world." A somewhat less memorized, but equally important verse comes from one of the epistles: "This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim 2:3b-4). In addition to these verses, I think it safe to say that the entire tenure of scripture reveals a God of love who does not want any of his creation to be out of communion with him. This is the God of the cross.
The second truth, however, is the belief that only through Christ can sinners be reconciled to God. The biblical evidence on this point is equally strong. In one of his earliest sermons, St. Peter declares: "This Jesus is 'the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.' There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:11-12). To take the verses we have already cited, God indeed loves the world but the stipulation for everlasting life is belief in Jesus. And the verse which follows 1 Tim 2:4 states: "For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus . . ."
When applying these truths to the fate of the unevangelized - that is those billions of people through history (and existing today) who never had the opportunity to hear the good news of Christ - we are left in a conundrum. For it seems that we cannot adequately maintain both of these truths. If we maintain that since God loves the world and wills the salvation of all, then he will surely provide a way for the salvation of those who have not heard the gospel. Yet the moment we affirm something like this, we put the truth that salvation comes only through Jesus in jeopardy. What is worse, we marginalize the work of the cross. For if God was able to save some humans apart from Jesus, then why did Jesus have to die? This is a theological question without an easy answer.
One of the best recent articles I have read on the subject comes from the hand of the Catholic Cardinal Avery Dulles, "Who Can be Saved?". He lucidly defines the difficulty and what is at stake in our answer. Additionally, he traces the history of thought on the subject which is enlightening in itself. He concludes with an answer that I think very satisfying. If you want to read this article, click here.
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4 comments:
Jackson --
You reject the “Calvinist” position on election because of the difficult “mental gymnastics” involved. Yet you appear willing to embrace the “conundrum” of a God who seriously desires the salvation of all, but has proven unable to accomplish it. Dulles’ solution - that God, “in a manner known only to God” makes a way for those ignorant of Christianity to be saved - not only preserves the conundrum, but declares it unknown and unknowable from the beginning.
Does rejecting the doctrine of sovereign election not the create more mental gymnastics for you then it solves?
Hi Anon-
This is a good and important question, thank you for raising it. First of all regarding the article, as I read Dulles, I did not see him holding that God makes a way for those ignorant of Christianity to be saved APART from Christ but rather that God makes a way for those ignorant of Christianity to one day (whether at death or before) come into contact with Christ and the gospel. This is an important distinction because the way that you frame it implies (whether you meant to or not) that one can know God apart from Christ. Dulles is not saying this.
And here then is why the manner has to be unknown - we affirm that the loving God makes the offer of grace through Christ to all human beings (i.e. reveals Christ to those who have had no chance - that we know of - to hear about him). This has to be unknown (and a conundrum as you say) because it happens only in God's economy. We do not always see it happening on earth insofar as billions have died without ever having come into contact with the gospel. How can we affirm that this unknown offer really happens then? Because God is revealed in scripture to be a loving God who wants all his children to be saved. If this is true, then it seems to me that all must have a chance to accept or reject the offer.
I do not accept the statement you make that I embrace a God who has been "proven unable to accomplish it." First of all, we do not know that this is indeed the case. Maybe God has saved all in his economy. As Hans Urs von Balthasar has admirably written, dare we hope that all might be saved? Secondly, even if some are not ultimately saved, it does not follow that it is because of a weakness in God. God has done everything that needed to be done in order for all to be saved in giving his son to be crucified and then raising him again. This is what the phrase "Paid in Full" means. Those who are not saved are not, therefore, not because God was unable to save them, but because they have freely rejected his grace. Thus, I affirm an all powerful, sovereign God but the end result of this belief is not necessarily that all will be saved but rather that all will have the option of receiving that grace. This is what I believe God will provide to all in his unknown economy.
I reject the Calvinist position because I think that it tries to solve the unknown by saying that God only wills some to be saved. But in preserving his power and sovereignty, it casts serious doubt on his love. It says, in effect, that God could have saved all but simply chose not to. I do not know how - and this is where the mental gymnastics come in - that this can be squared with the God of scripture, the God of the cross. I think it is more consistent, and takes less mental gymnastics, to affirm that God in his economy will offer the free grace of Christ to all humans, whether we see that offer happening or not.
I appreciate your willingness to indulge a good, old-fashioned Calvinist-Arminian debate on your blog. It is a good thing that Christians – whatever their theological convictions – can still come together in fellowship and brotherhood under the cross.
Three points on your response:
1) You read Dulles to say that those ignorant of Christianity in this life will somehow come into contact with the gospel – at death or sometime thereafter – and that each person will be somehow be given a free chance to accept or reject the grace offered to him by God. This is interesting theological speculation. Is it tethered to any actual text of Scripture? We hold that God loves the whole world and therefore that he wishes all to be saved. Good. We agree on that. Scripture is replete with exhortations – many of which Dulles cites – to take the gospel to the nations. But is there any text specifically supporting the idea that each individual person gets (another?) chance at death to accept or reject God’s grace? Your argument, it seems, is based upon what we believe the implications should be based upon what we know about God’s love. God loves everyone, so surely he must give everyone a chance to be saved. But this is little more than our own speculation. Is there is any biblical text that would directly support it? It would be unusual and, I think, unwise, to base so important a matter as the eternal destiny of the nations on so flimsy a textual basis.
2) You state that the manner in which God makes his offer of grace to the unevangelized “has to be unknown” because it happens only in God’s economy. But to declare that the question is unknowable doesn’t really give us an answer. It merely declares the question out of bounds. Why is this a satisfying resolution? If you and I are trying to find the answer to a difficult theological question, I doubt that “I don’t know; ask God” is really a sufficient answer.
3) Finally, you write that the doctrine of sovereign election preserves God’s power and sovereignty, but casts serious doubt on his love – implying, it seems, that a God who ordains to save some, but not all, would not be a loving God. I take this to be a core proposition of the Arminian view of things. Dulles, it seems, takes a similar view. After all, if God truly loves the innocent person in the far off country, then surely he must give him a chance to be saved, whether in this life or the next, right?
But the whole theme of scripture is that there is no such thing as an innocent person. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. If God condemns a person, he does so justly, and it is not unloving for him to do so. As N.T. Wright has written, God's wrath at sin is a part of his love. If God is not wrathful at sin, then he is not a loving God. If God does not hate racism, then he is not a good and loving God. If God does not burn with anger at child abuse, then he is not a good and loving God. That God gives anyone at all a chance at salvation is pure grace, and no one can lay claim to unfairness on God's part for be denied a chance at something he didn't deserve anyway.
Is God nevertheless obligated to give each individual person a free shot at salvation in order to be loving? I don’t think so. To use the examples that Paul used, God did not cease to be loving when he chose Jacob over Esau; God did not cease to be loving when he chose Moses over Pharaoh; God did not cease to be loving when he chose Israel from among all the nations of the earth. And God does not cease to be loving when he chooses, sovereignly, a remnant of his creation from among all the peoples of the earth to serve as his church. Being loving is part of what it means to be God. God does not cease to be loving simply because he does not express his love in the manner we think he should.
We err in assuming that all loves are necessarily created equal. We know and affirm that God loves all of his creation (John 3:16). But God also has a fatherly love for his children, those who are called according to his name, which is different and separate from his love for the whole of creation. We know this implicitly from our own experience. As a Christian, I am called to love all people, which I do to the best of my ability according to the grace given to me. But I am also called to have a special kind love for my wife and children. The fact that I love my wife and children differently than I love the rest of the world does not negate my love for the world. But it does give my love for the world a different expression. Similarly, God’s love for the world may take on a different expression than his love for the rest of his creation. God is not necessarily unloving because, in the sovereign counsel of his will, he chooses only to save a remnant from among all the peoples of the earth. Thus, we affirm that God loves the whole world and God loves his chosen children. But he loves them differently.
Is this too much mental gymnastics? Perhaps. But it takes much more to hold to the extra-biblical concept of a post-death second chance at salvation.
Hey, I love good old fashioned debates no matter what topic! And I certainly seem to be up against someone who knows his or her stuff. I just hope we are not boring anyone else who might peek in here.
To respond to your well written comment. You are correct when you say that my view that all will be presented with the gospel at some point is based on the inference of God's love, which in my mind constitutes "the whole theme of Scripture" to use your words. I think that this is not an unfair inference to make. This may come down to our varying views of revelation. It sounds like you feel the need to ground every one of your beliefs to some propositional truth text in scripture. I believe God has revealed himself to his church not through a book with a bunch of propositions, but rather through the covenantal story that reveals him to be a loving God. Insofar as the God of love is the main character of the story, I think it not an anti-scriptural "speculation" to think that he would present the gospel to all his creatures whether through his church (the primary way) or through some miraculous intervention.
What I argue here is not that much different than the more traditional argument that through nature God has revealed himself sufficiently to all humans. Paul says as much in Rom 1:20, "all men are without an excuse." I take this to mean that all humans respond to the amount of revelation they have been given, and that response can either be appropriate or inappropriate. My inference that all humans will at some point be presented with the Gospel is simply to say that God is fully revealed in Jesus Christ, such that whatever is revealed of God can only be revealed through Christ.
Regarding your second point, I stand in a long and venerable tradition of the church when I speak of the "unknowableness" of the divine economy. I suspect that our need to find answers and our refusal to accept the hiddenness of God as an adequate answer is a product of our modern minds. The Fathers had no such difficulty, and most (particularly the Eastern Fathers) proclaimed that God is ultimately mystery, unknowable in his nature, that all of heaven will be a gradual deepening of our knowledge of God, which can never be fully satisfied.
I am not one to push the mystery button often as, like you, I think it better to talk these things out and come to some sort of conclusion. I do not push it here to squelch conversation, but rather to make the observation that we simply do not know the economy of God and we thus can never say definitively whether or not someone has been confronted with the Gospel.
Your third point is a bit more tricky because I fundamentally agree with most of your points. Indeed there is no innocent person and none deserve the grace that God gives them. It is all undeserved and God would have been just to leave us all to our own devices.
So I do not believe that God is obligated to give everyone a chance to be saved anymore than I believe that God was obligated to creature the world or was obligated to send his son to the cross. What I see revealed in scripture is a God who does these things freely and for all. I do not buy your distinctions between God's love and our love and I think it is a convenient way of getting around the problematic verses (to your view) stressing God's love for all. If God passes over some of creation when he could have just as easily saved them (because in the Calvinist view there is no need for human cooperation), I fail to see how this can merely be a "different expression" of God's love for those who are passed over, considering that they are passed over to burn for eternity.
Furthermore, you bring up the example of our love as a helpful way of understanding God's love. I agree. But to take St. Thomas' via eminencia - we must understand that God's love is infinitely greater than our love. And then we ask ourselves, would we pass over some to perdition when we could easily save them? The answer is of course no, for this is no love at all. The same holds true for God in an infinitely truer way.
This is not to say that God then does not have wrath. He most certainly does have wrath. This is most clearly displayed in the cross where God cannot just forgive sins by saying 'I forgive.' Some sacrifice had to be made. Not all sin goes unpunished. Even forgiven sin has its dire consequences as in the story of King David. All that I am saying is the grace of God extends to all. Those who reject experience the wrath of God.
Regarding your scriptural examples, remember that in the OT, election is never done for the sake of the person (or nation) who is elected. Rather, the election is done for the sake of the world, as God spoke to Abraham: "the nations will be blessed through you." I believe that the doctrine of election as brandied today forgets this and holds that individuals are elected for their own salvation. This I think is a misreading of the scriptural evidences of election. But if it is true that God elects individuals and nations to spread his light to an unbelieving world, then we have more scriptural evidence that God is drawing all the world to him. The likelihood that all will come is, unfortunately, small. However, the likelihood that God will somehow make that call known to all I think is infinitely great.
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