Part 2 of a review of John Piper, Jesus: The Only Way to God: Must You Hear the Gospel to be Saved?
In the first part, we considered John Piper’s argument against annihilationism, universalism and relativistic pluralism, all of which he views as threats to the church’s missionary motivation. In this post, we come to Piper’s third question and his argument against inclusivism and agnosticism. Once again, I will restate his rationale for answering “yes” to the question and then I will interact with his argument.
Again, I look forward to hearing your assessment of whether Piper is correct to answer “yes” to the question he raises, and whether you think that answering “no” would diminish the church’s motivation for mission.
Restatement of Piper’s Argument
In question 3, Piper asks: “Is conscious faith in Jesus necessary for salvation?”
This is the question about which Piper is “most concerned . . . because it is the one where more people are surrendering biblical truth” (26). Accordingly, he devotes half of the book to this question. John Sanders and Millard Erickson are his exemplars of evangelicals who say “no” to this question (i.e., “inclusivists”), and John Stott represents evangelicals who are agnostic on the question.
Piper devotes 4 chapters to the defense of his positive answer to this question,.
1. The Mystery of Christ and the Times of Ignorance
1) Ephesians 3:4-10 describes the gospel as God’s instrument for bringing the nations into equal status of salvation and so it is fitting “that the nations be gathered only through the preaching of the message of Christ” (65);
2) in consequence of Christ’s coming, his followers are instructed to command all the nations to obey God through faith in Jesus the Messiah;
3) Paul told the Athenians that the “times of ignorance,” during which God “allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways” are now passed;
4) “in this ‘now’ of redemptive history, knowing the gospel is the only way to become an heir of the promise” (73);
5) with the end of the times of ignorance, the “necessary focus of saving faith” (76) has changed so that “apart from a knowledge of [Jesus], none who has the ability to know will be saved” (77).
2. The case of Cornelius
Piper states 4 reasons from Acts 10 and 11 for his conviction that Cornelius was not already saved prior to Peter’s preaching. Rather, Cornelius “represents a kind of unsaved person among an unreached people group who is seeking God in an extraordinary way” (87), and God accepted his search as genuine. He would not have been saved if no one had given him the gospel.
3. No other name under heaven
1) Acts 4:12 not only describes the uniqueness of Jesus as the world’s only Savior, in order to be saved by his work, “you must have heard of him and know who he is as a particular man who did a particular saving work and rose from the dead” (95);
2) Romans 10:14-21 teaches that preachers of the good news are necessary, so that people can believe in him because, otherwise, they can not be saved.
4. The missionary task as seen by Paul and John
Paul conceived of his missionary vocation as a commission to preach the gospel to the Gentiles so that they might turn from darkness to light and receive forgiveness of sins (Acts 26:15-18). Through Paul’s preaching to the Gentiles, God does the sovereign work that he had “overlooked” for so long, during the “times of ignorance.” John reports Jesus’ desire to gather into his flock other sheep (Jn 10:16), namely, the Gentiles, and this gathering is done through the voice of Christ’s messengers. Only those who believe in Jesus can come to the Father (Jn 14:6) and it is through the word of Jesus’ disciples that this faith comes (Jn 6:35; 7:38; 11:25; 12:46; 17:20).
Interaction
The third question
Only in regard to this third question do Piper and I part company. I call the position that he rejects “accessibilism,” in order to avoid the confusion created by the diverse definitions given to “inclusivism” in the literature. The issue between gospel exclusivists on the one hand and either agnostics or accessibilists on the other is logically only a dispute between monergists. For synergists, gospel exclusivism is incoherent. As Stuart Hackett put it, “a universally redemptive provision is not genuinely universal unless it is also and for that reason universally accessible” (The Reconstruction of the Christian Revelation, 244). Within monergism, however, where God chooses, from among the willfully rebellious, those whom he will graciously and efficaciously bring to repentance, faith and salvation, it is possible that God might choose not to reveal himself savingly to all human beings. Such was the conviction of Calvin, and John Piper stands in that venerable tradition. But in the first generation of Swiss Reformers, Zwingli held to accessibilism and numerous other Reformed theologians have, on this point, gone with Zurich rather than Geneva. So, for “Calvinists,” and for monergists in general, this is an ongoing point of disagreement. (Except in the Roman Catholic Church, where gospel exclusivism has been officially rejected and accessibilism is the norm.)
How can we account for the difference between gospel exclusivists and agnostics or accessibilists? Here’s my current theory: there are no texts in the Bible that state explicitly that only the evangelized will be saved, and there are none that state explicitly that any of the unevangelized will be saved. I think this is the reason for widespread agnosticism on this point among Calvinists these days. The decisive factor is therefore the different understandings of the metanarrative concerning God’s saving program that people bring to their interpretation of individual texts.
We accessibilists have been impressed by the amazing graciousness of God who is “rich in mercy” (Eph 2:4) and whose redemptive work is directed toward the restoration of his creation. God’s covenants, though made with particular people, are always in pursuit of his extensive gracious purposes. They bring about communities which are God’s primary agents in his redemptive program, though not all members of those communities are saved. Furthermore, those whom God has saved are not all members of the covenant community or even people who know about it. From this starting point, we are as hopeful for salvation as Scripture allows us to be and so the lack of specifically gospel exclusivist texts speaks loudly.
Piper reads the biblical narrative differently, concluding that, as God reveals himself more fully in successive covenants, the circle of those who have access to God’s saving work in Christ grows narrower. Before Christ came, says Piper, “saving faith reposed in the forgiving and helping mercy of God displayed in events like the exodus and in the sacrificial offerings and in the prophetic promises like Isaiah 53” (76). In other words, covenantal revelation has always been necessary for saving faith. The bar of revelation necessary for saving faith is set very high, in all periods of history. Piper hears no texts specifically stating that people who are inculpably ignorant of God’s covenantal revelation will be saved, and his narrower vision of God’s redemptive program takes him in a different direction from accessibilists.
When Piper reads Romans 1:18-20, for instance, he concludes that natural revelation leaves everyone without excuse but it does not save (11). But that is an over-reading of the text. Paul says that the wrath of God is revealed against all who suppress the truth in unrighteousness but he does not say that the Spirit of God never illumines the minds of some people whose only access to God’s self-revelation is in nature or history, so that they acknowledge God as Creator and are thankful. Indeed, we have examples of such people. Piper says that natural revelation “does not overcome this suppression. Only the gospel does” (11). But even the gospel does not, as external revelation, overcome people’s sinful tendency to suppress God’s truth. An accompanying work of the Spirit (illumination and enabling) is needed for special revelation to have saving effect. Paul does not say that such work of the Spirit is never done in connection with natural revelation so that it elicits justifying faith.
In short, Scripture clearly states that all who believe and obey God’s revelation are saved and that all who reject God’s revelation remain under condemnation. In numerous texts (such as John 3), gospel exclusivists hear a judgment of those who do not believe, where Scripture is speaking only of those who receive the particular revelation, not of those who are ignorant through no fault of their own.
In a similar textual over-reading, Piper says that Paul and John were “of one mind: people only come to saving faith through the word of the gospel of Christ” (115). But Piper cites no texts in which either apostle actually says this. On numerous occasions, they testify that saving faith comes through gospel proclamation but they never say that it is only by that means that God saves people by grace through faith. Minimally, we could say that Scripture is silent about the unevangelized, but accessibilists find biblical reasons for hope.
While not denying the great importance of the progress in redemptive history accomplished by Christ’s death and resurrection, I. Howard Marshall asserts that Paul was telling the Athenians (in Acts 17:30) that “the proclamation of the Christian message brings this time to an end so far as those who hear the gospel are concerned; they no longer have the excuse of ignorance. God was prepared to overlook their ignorance, but now he will do so no longer” (his Tyndale commentary on Acts, 289-90, but the emphasis is mine).
Throughout human history, people have had to relate to God in terms of the revelation God has given them. This point, made so clearly in Romans 2:6-16, is not addressed by Piper. Every revelation calls for a particular faith response and God justifies those who, by his grace, respond with the appropriate faith. The minimum is clearly defined in Hebrews 11:6, the belief that God exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
Piper rightly sees the experience of Cornelius as significant for this discussion but he shows no awareness that notable monergist theologians inclined to gospel exclusivism have asserted that Cornelius was saved before Peter arrived at his house. These include Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and Francis Turretin. It is important to Piper that the angel had told Cornelius that Simon Peter would preach to him a message “by which you and your entire household will be saved” (Acts 11:14), from which Piper concludes that salvation had not yet occurred. But Scripture speaks of salvation in past, present and future terms. I take this to be a reference to Cornelius’s future salvation. Similarly, Paul quotes to Timothy a saying or hymn of the early church that “if we endure, we will also reign with [Christ]” (2 Tim 2:12) but elsewhere he says that we reign with Christ now (Rom 5:17; Eph 2:5,6). It is important to keep moving forward in faith responses to every revelation with which God graces us. For these we will give account.
I believe that our soteriology should account for the salvation of all kinds of people in a coherent way. Consequently, I suggest that hope for the unevangelized can be found within Piper’s own understanding of the salvation of infants and the disabled. He writes: “The Bible does not deal with this special case in any detail, and we are left to speculate that the fitness of the connection between faith in Christ and salvation will be preserved through the coming to faith of children whenever God brings them to maturity in heaven or in the age to come” (77 n6). This is very close to what I have proposed concerning the unevangelized. Those who, by the Spirit’s gracious illumination and enabling, have believed appropriately to the nature of the revelation they had received, will meet Christ at death with joy, recognizing him instantly as the one for whom they were looking. I’ve wondered whether that should be identified as the moment of their justification but, currently, I think it better to grant that God justifies immediately people who have the faith of Noah or Job or Abraham or Melchizedek or Jethro, if they have only received the revelation available to those individuals, regardless of the progress of redemptive history of which they are then ignorant.
Motivation for Missions
Some of the comments I made in the last post regarding the effect of annihilationism and universalism upon missionary motivation also apply in regard to accessibilism. When we think about the joy we have in knowing our sins forgiven, and the privilege of growing in grace in a community of God’s people, how can we not want that for people who, though justified, lack these blessings of living with knowledge of the new covenant? Only someone who thinks that the purpose of evangelism is just saving people from hell after the resurrection, could withhold from others the blessings we experience through knowledge of the gospel. Accessibilists are well aware that gospel proclamation is God’s normal or ordinary means of bringing people to himself but, as various Reformed confessional documents have noted, some of God’s elect may be drawn through extraordinary means.
It is significant that, among the many things said in the New Testament about what motivated particular people to difficult and dangerous evangelistic work, gospel exclusivism is never mentioned. Nor is it ever used to motivate other believers to evangelistic mission. When Paul told the Romans that he planned on getting their support for his mission to Spain, he did not tell them that, since he might be delayed in getting there, they had better send someone promptly, because the unevangelized can not be saved.
Piper appeals to Romans 10, in support of gospel proclamation as the only means by which God saves people, but this takes the text out of context. In Romans 9-11, as Paul expresses his longing for the salvation of his countrymen, he pursues various possible reasons for their unbelief in Jesus. One such possibility might be that they have not heard about Jesus. But Paul says “no,” in fact the message concerning Jesus had been very widely spread but, as in the times of Moses and Isaiah, many in the nation were hard of heart and spiritually blind. Their unbelief was not because they lacked knowledge of the gospel because of a shortage of missionaries. This is not a text about the unevangelized and it should not be read as though it were.
I look forward to your comments on my alternative proposal to Piper’s gospel exclusivism. May God be glorified in our pursuit of his truth and may he stir our hearts to joyful participation in his mission and to glorifying God for the greatness of his grace.
This post addresses an “accessibilist” soteriology concerning the unevangelized, infants, and the disabled – essentially holding out hope that if they engage in the appropriate faith response for their level of revelation (presumably nothing is required of infants) that they might later be justified in Christ.
But what about those who do hear the Gospel message, or are at least aware of the basics of it, that given how they were raised and the beliefs their society influenced them to adopt, see no reason to believe that the Gospel is in fact God’s revelation to mankind?
Is salvation accessible to them as well? I would really like that question tackled rather than the far easier and more sympathetic case of the unevangelized, disabled, and infants.
Terrance I appreciate the “hopeful” language you use, it is appropriately humble (in my agnostic opinion).
@ Tim
Until someone hears an explanation of the gospel that is cogent within their worldview, they remain in the “unevangelized” category IMO.
It is significant to me that many (most?) people who hold an either agnostic or hopeful view on this are those who have actually attempted to engage with the unevangelized [and have therefore learned how many barriers there are beyond language and geography]. Again, dogmatism hurts the cause of missions, rather than protecting it.
What is the “conscious faith” of the infant or someone with autism? Knowing that this is a difficult question, Piper allows for exception for such people–that God will save them. But then are there different categories of people within humanity? Is this “biblical truth”?
Also, it seems that for Piper the event of the cross and resurrection becomes real through belief, and that if one does not believe the events are not efficacious. Can we label Piper a Bultmannian?
I don’t know if I am being fair to Piper because I have not read the book but only the postings regarding the book, but I am saddened by what I read. I sense a great burden that is placed upon humanity to save itself. I sense a god who retreats rather than is present and active, and is quite different than the one exegeted by Jesus Christ. I sense a doctrine of sin that is not serious enough, that does not recognize to what extent humanity has been wrecked.
Where is the Christology? Does or does not Jesus Christ believe for us when we cannot? Was not Jesus Christ the faithful human response to God, the faithful Israelite? Are we not baptized into what he has accomplished? Or are we baptized into what we have decided?
Am I the only one who finds it odd that a Calvinist such as Piper would take the position he does? I’ve not read this book either, so this is a sincere question that isn’t meant to be sarcastic: could someone reading this book accuse Piper of placing the onus of salvation on the individual rather than Christ? (In this, I guess my impression is similar to Alan’s above.)
Terry, Do you know where Luther was on this as compared to Calvin and Zwingly?
I’d like to hear more about Zwingli’s view on this. Any articles/books you recommend?
Terrance, thank you for a wonderful post. I am enjoying it.
This is wonderful.
Imo, justification is irrelevant before that moment so it really does not make sense to think of it occuring before then.
Terry,
This is a meaty post – of the sort that must be read several times. I don’t find the arguments for a firm exclusivism convincing, either biblically or morally. I know that many will claim that our moral sense is not trustworthy, but biblical sense is another issue.
Does the worldview of the NT writers figure into your thinking at all? The world is much larger with many more people in many more places and conditions than than Paul or Peter or John had any idea. The lack of concrete exclusivity along with the sheer magnitude of the issue is persuasive evidence in my thinking that there was not a cosmic limitation to the grace of God at the time of the crucifixion and resurrection. God can and will do what he wills to bring people to himself.
If I understand exclusivity – it is essentially the idea that before Christ God could bring aboriginal persons in Australia to himself – after Christ he no longer would (or could as he declared faith in Christ alone necessary and sufficient).
This has long been a shelf doctrine – in the sense of one I do not believe and will not affirm. Positions ranging from agnosticism to accessibilism seem to me the only reasonable choices.
“Except in the Roman Catholic Church, where gospel exclusivism has been officially rejected and accessibilism is the norm.”
I’m going to plead layman’s ignorance on this one. Where was exclusivism officially rejected and accessibilism declared the norm in the RCC?
Kenton,
It was rejected at Vatican II.
Thanks, Tim. It looks like I’ll have to brush up on my “Lumen Gentium”.
“Here’s my current theory: there are no texts in the Bible that state explicitly that only the evangelized will be saved….”
Romans 10:14-15
14 How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?
15 And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!
John Wesley believed that many of the unevangelized (aka the “heathen” in those days) could receive / perceive the “inward voice” of God and that noone should “sentence all the heathen and Mahometan world to damnation.”
Thomas Aquinas also believed that God could, and did, give miraculous revelation to those outside the ambit of gospel proclamation.
Many older Christian theologians, such as Zwingli, believed that Socrates was saved.
Don Fanning, Liberty University, sketches out eleven views about the fate of the uninformed: http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=cgm_theo
CS Lewis was an agnostic on this issue, but quite open to accessiblism / inclusivism: Agnosticism (C.S. Lewis): “Is it not frightfully unfair that this new life should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him” (Lewis, 1952, p. 50).
As to the relation of this issue (and Hell) to the motivation for missions, Fanning writes “As early as 1932-33, in preparation for the International Missionary Council in Tambaram, India, William Hocking wrote in the infamous Layman’s foreign Missionary Inquiry, “There is little disposition to believe that sincere and aspiring seekers after God in other religions are to be damned: it has become less concerned in any land to save men from eternal punishment than from the danger of losing the supreme good.” (Van Rheenen, 2005, p. 169).”
Fanning quotes from Van Rheenen, G. (2005). “Changing Motivations for Missions: From ‘Fear of Hell’ to ‘the
glory of God’.” In The Changing Face of World Missions: Engaging Contemporary Issues and Trends (pp. 161-182). Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.
John I.
Tim (#1), I don’t assume that infants are saved without faith. One could follow A. H. Strong and place their moment of faith and hence of salvation at the point of death when they meet Christ. But, I think it best to posit an act of faith during their lives.
Alan (# 3) – you asked how infants can have “conscious” faith. I approach this from the perspective of a substance dualist and I urge people not to reduce people’s soulish capabilities to those of the body, or to reduce the capabilities of mind to those of brain. Only when people’s brain develops to the needed level can we learn of what they are thinking but this does not mean that they had no thoughts prior to that time. I think that we get an interesting indication of this when John the Baptist jumped in his mother’s womb when Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting and was herself filled with the Holy Spirit and rejoiced that the mother of her Lord had come to see her (Lk 1:41-42).
Given this anthropology, I do not assume that because infants are incapable of communicating with us that they are incapable of relating to God. I assume that the Spirit is able to regenerate the unborn and the brain disabled and give them faith.
Tim (#1),
You asked about the situation of those who have heard the gospel but who have been unable to comprehend it for various reasons. This is an important issue. It is my conviction that people are responsible only for what God has taught them. We can not, therefore, assume that when people reject our gospel declaration that they have rejected Jesus. They only reject Jesus when God has revealed to them the identity of Jesus and they have rejected or suppressed the Spirit’s revelation (which we often describe theologically as “illumination,” but which Scripture also speaks of in terms of revelation.) This is why it is sometimes difficult for us to discern where people are in their relationship with God. Only God can discern people’s hearts. We simply need to be faithful witnesses of Christ and pray for God to draw people to himself.
It is helpful to think about the experience of Jesus’ first disciples. I think it most likely that the 11 (not counting the “son of perdition”) were saved before they ever met Jesus; they were children of Abraham by faith. But they grew in their understanding of who Jesus was and their faith matured to the point at which they believed in Jesus. As Jesus said to Peter, when he confessed that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the living God (Mt 16:16), this was not something that Peter learned from “flesh and blood,” not even from the incarnate Word, it was revealed to him by the Father in heaven.
People are responsible to God only for what God himself reveals to them, and God has chosen the proclamation of the gospel to be the normal instrument by which he gives people the knowledge of which he gives them the understanding and the will to believe.
Thanks for your response, Terry. Given the anthropology you have stated, does God judge according to “capability”? What I’m getting at is that I am not sure there is anything that separates us who are “capable” from those who are “incapable”. Are we not all infants and disabled? Since you assume that the Spirit is able to regenerate the unborn and brain disabled, can that same regenerating capacity be at work in everyone, even to those who say “God, take a hike”?
I think that people will be judged on the basis of the light they have received. If all truth is God’s truth, regardless of where it is found (even in other religions), then people will be held to account for what they know and have done with that knowledge. How can God judge an individual for having never come in contact with the specific revelation of Jesus Christ? Especially if they were born and raised in a context where this message has never been proclaimed?
An interesting passage that points me in this direction is Romans 2:6-16. Verse 6 states, “God ‘will give to each person according to what he has done.’”
This does not mean that other religions are salvific by nature, but that God has not left Himself without a witness in every sphere of human existence, in the hope that people will respond to these fragments of truth wherever they may be found and live for God. Karl Rahner and Clark Pinnock held similar ideas.
Thoughts?
Alan (# 3),
Piper is certainly no Bultmannian existentialist, but I think you know that anyway.
Piper does not believe that an individuals faith makes the cross efficacious, but he does believe that its efficacy is experienced by an individual only when it is appropriated by faith. The work of both the Son and the Spirit are necessary for individuals to be saved.
Christians differ in regard to the way that Christ’s work is applied or becomes effective in an individual’s experience, so there is no single “Christian” answer to the question you raise in your last paragraph. Like Piper and other Calvinsts, I believe that justifying faith is a fruit of Christ’s atoning work. So, first (logically, accounting for those who were saved before Christ chronologically) Christ believed for us and then we believe by God’s enablement, which may, perhaps, be described as Christ’s believing in us. (Cf. Paul, “it is not I but Christ who lives”)
“and there are none that state explicitly that any of the unevangelized will be saved.”
While I agree, for the most part, with this statement I think there are some verses that significantly point in this direction. I’m thinking of the “all” (tas panta)passages found in Paul. Passages like: Romans 11:32 “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.” or Colossians 1:20 “and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” or how about the old testament passages that refer to God’s salvation outside of Israel such as Amos 9:7 “Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O people of Israel? says the LORD. Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?”
I realize these are “out of context” as I have listed them but I believe even in context they lead toward a more “universal” or “accessible” possibility for salvation. I agree with Terrance that we should be cautious to set up a full-blown universalism based on these passages because of other particularist leaning passages that also exist in scripture, however, we cannot overlook the fact that these universal passages exist. I also agree that hoping for a universal salvation for all in Christ or a more accessible understanding of salvation do not lead to a laziness in evangelism. Actually I believe the reverse to be true. It is people who believe they are “saving” people from hell with their evangelism who often have a less than “good news” message to proclaim and thus might be unwilling to proclaim it.
John Calvin Hall #12,
I think you’re assuming that only those who call on the Lord will be saved and that, therefore, those who never call can’t be saved. p->q, ~p, therefore ~q. Faulty logic.
terrance, you said,
“Only someone who thinks that the purpose of evangelism is just saving people from hell after the resurrection, could withhold from others the blessings we experience through knowledge of the gospel.”
I am so glad to hear someone else say that! You hit the nail on the head and it’s what I’ve been trying to say in various conversations.
Opponents to annihilationism and universalism say all the time “then what’s the use in sharing the gospel?” That objection exposes a deep poverty in their view of the gospel – that for them it’s only really valuable for getting out of hell. What about a relationship with Jesus now? What about not wasting your life Piper?
Brian (# 4),
No, Piper does not place the onus of salvation on the individual. I sensed that he wrote his book in a way that would give it maximum usefulness, to synergists (e.g., Arminians) as well as monergists, but his own theology is clearly monergist, as is evident elsewhere.
Taylor (# 5),
Luther rarely spoke of the unevangelized but we can find a couple of instances in which Luther speaks of them hopefully. In his commentary on Romans (1515), Luther wrote: “Original sin God could forgive [the unevangelized] even though they may not have recognized it and confessed it) on account of some act of humility towards God as the highest being that they know. Nor were they bound to the Gospel and to Christ as specifically recognized, as the Jews were not either. Or one can say that all people of this type have been given so much light and grace by an act of prevenient mercy of God as is sufficient for their salvation in their situation, as in the case of Job, Naaman, Jethro and others” (Luther’s Works, 25:181).
Very nicely put, I think.
@ # 12, John Calvin Hall, that text in Romans isn’t a refutation of Terry’s point.
Justin (6),
For Zwingli’s position, take a look at his Exposition of the Faith, available in the Library of Christian Classics series, Zwingli and Bullinger, particularly pages 275-76.
People have pointed out before what I think is a chink in the armour of Piper’s argument: his view on infant salvation. Personally, I don’t (at the moment) want to assert that infants will be saved, because I see no warrant for it in Scripture. The passages cited (e.g. John’s leaping in the womb) aren’t really convincing to me. John, after all, was a very special person.
Also, what do you make of the grim reality that in unreached cultures, the people who are often most opposed to the Gospel are those whom one would expect to be “closest” to God? The priests, sages, etc. of, say, a New Guinean tribe were usually the ones who were the last to believe. It was the outcast, the young, or the poor who came first.
RJS (#8),
You raise a good question about the worldview of the New Testament. There were obviously parts of the world about which they were ignorant. This continued to be true into the partristic period. As a case in point, Irenaeus (late 2nd C) has been cited by some Catholic theologians as a forerunner of Karl Rahner’s concept of “anonymous Christianity.” In my Ph. D. dissertation (published as Irenaeus on the Salvation of the Unevangelized), I examined Irenaeus’s work to see how valid such a proposal is. I discovered that Irenaeus had no concept of the unevangelized; that was a category completely outside of his frame of reference. In the final analysis, however, I did propose a series of reasons for believing that Irenaeus would have affirmed the possibility of the salvation of the unevangelized. Many of these were natural entailments of his synergism.
Since I was, at the time of my writing, a gospel exclusivist, I could not be charged with having simply sought in Irenaeus a view that I held personally. J
As to the gospel exclusivist position on aboriginals in Australia prior to the cross, I should point out, however, that coherent gospel exclusivists would not allow for the possibility of the aboriginals salvation. As is clear in Piper, the assumption throughout the process of divine revelation in the stages of redemptive history, the latest covenantal revelation was always necessary for justifying faith. Consequently, if the Australians did not look forward to the fulfilment of the promises made to Abraham they could not be saved.
Kenton (# 9),
Others have pointed you to Vatican II, which is obviously of great importance, but we can go back further. The first Roman Catholic document to speak of people who are inculpably (or invincibly) ignorant of the true religion was Pope Pius IX’s Singulari Quadem, in 1854. “Now, who could presume for oneself the ability to set the boundaries of such ignorance, taking into consideration the natural differences of peoples, lands, talents and so many other factors? Only when we have been released from the bonds of this body and ‘shall see God as he is’ [1 Jn 3:2] shall we understand how closely and wonderfully the divine mercy and justice are linked” (Denzinger 1647).
A very interesting incident comes up in a letter from Pope Pius XII to the Bishop of Boston in 1949. He condemned Father Leonard Feeney for applying the axiom “there is no salvation outside the church” too rigorously and went on to reiterate the concept of implicit faith or the baptism of desire.
This comes as a surprise to Protestants who frequently assume that Cyprian’s axiom has made the Roman Catholic Church permanently ecclesiocentric exclusivists. But Roman Catholic theologians now argue that such a position, strongly enunciated by the Council of Florence in 1442, was addressing the situation of heretics and schismatics, not speaking about the unevangelized.
More recently, in John Paul II’s encyclical Redemptoris Missio (“Into All the World”), you’ll find a wonderfully passionate appeal to renewed evangelism by Roman Catholics, within a clearly accessibilist perspective. My own analysis of that document appears in The Legacy of John Paul II: An Evangelical Assessment.
John (# 12),
For my own perspective on Romans 10:14-15, I’ll refer you to the second last paragraph in my post. It is clear to me that Paul is not speaking about the unevangelized at all here, he is explaining why many of the Jews, although they had been evangelized, did not believe in Jesus.
Surely, Paul’s words here do spell out a principle that has always been true – faith requires revelation, God’s truth (“word”) must be made known in order for faith to be elicited as a response. In this case, Paul does refer to the revelation concerning Jesus, because he is probing the specific question: “Why have Jews not believed in Jesus?” But we must read this general principle in light of Rom 2:12-16, where Paul spells out the larger principle that God holds people accountable in regard to their response to the revelation they have received, not to further revelation which has been given to others but not yet made known to these people.
Alan (# 14),
Yes, God does judge us according to our capability. The cognitive inability of infants and the mentally disabled and the epistemic inability of the unevangelized should be addressed by a soteriological principle that accounts for both types of inability (“ignorance”) coherently. It is for this reason that I suggest that Piper’s position on infants and the disabled has the seed of hope for the unevangelized. If he were pushed to coherence, however, he might just opt for hoplessness in regard to infants rather than hopefulness for the unevangelized. But, I do think theological coherence is important.
If the regenerative work of God had been at work in a person’s heart and mind, they would not say “God, take a hike.” Nor, in the case of the unevangelized, would they worship idols; they would worship the Creator and give him thanks; or they would build an ark, or offer up an only son, or hide Israelite spies, or in some other way demonstrate faith in God (as per Heb 11).
Ben@26 said,
“Also, what do you make of the grim reality that in unreached cultures, the people who are often most opposed to the Gospel are those whom one would expect to be “closest” to God?”
Two comments on this.
First, the Jews were in a similar position. Those in the hierarchy have many motivations to preserve the status quo.
Second, but what is the gospel that they did not believe? I would contend that people who think some people on this earth are going to ECT just because they do not know the name Jesus are the ones most unlikely to be saved. What is the gospel of Jesus? If someone reads scripture yet insists that they are above others, whether it be people who have not heard the true scripture, women, people of other nationalities or other cultures then that person does not know Jesus, in my book. Does someone who hears the gospel (I am thinking of people who call themselves Christians) but gets it totally backwards get saved?
Perhaps the people in the New Guinean tribe were told that they have to believe some guy in the middle east who taught of ECT must be God. I wouldn’t believe it either.
Ben (# 26),
You raise an interesting point about leaders in other religions being the slowest to convert to faith in Jesus. Perhaps our frequent mistake is to assume that the devoutly religious are closest to God. I view all religions (including Christianity) as ambiguous responses to God’s revelation. Each includes elements of the appropriation of God’s truth and elements of suppression, either because of self-deception and personal sinfulness in general, or because of demonic deception. Consequently, the devoutly religious, though expressing their God given spiritual hunger may have opened themselves up to demonic seduction, in their attempts to satisfy the hunger.
A reason why the poor and needy are most quick to respond to the gospel is that they have not developed other, idolatrous, grounds of confidence and hope. The religiously devout may, by contrast, be well satisfied with their own righteousness and thoroughly convinced of the lies of the Adversary. So, when I speak of the possibility that adherents of other religions have already been saved, I do not have in mind those who are happily pursuing all the dictates of their religion. Rather, we will find the work of God’s Spirit among the doubtful, the dissatisfied; among those who are not finding within their religion a satisfaction of their spiritual hunger but know that God must be sought elsewhere. Some of these do come into genuine relationship with God, but they are consequently poor members of their own religions.
Terry-
I just want to say thanks for being so involved in these on-going discussions. It helps clarify some things and is appreciated.
@ Ben #26
We must consider to whom we preach. Most evangelistic outreach is aimed at those who we perceive have the most to gain from a conversion. The devout of other religions are seen as the enemy, and thus are the last to be approached with the gospel.
Thanks, Terry.
But I would contend that your Singulari Quadem quote is a little more ambiguous than what I’m reading in Lumen Gentium. And from what I can tell, your surprise about Cyprian’s axiom wouldn’t be limited to just protestants. (Laity anyway.)
Kenton (# 35),
Good point. Roman Catholic ignorance of the teaching of their own church is woeful. While in the Philippines, I took a course on Philippine church history taught by an American Jesuit. Commenting on the situation by the 1980s when 92% of the population were nominally Catholic, Schumacher observed that the church is full of “baptized pagans.” There were various reasons for that but one of them was certainly the paucity of clergy, given that lay catechists were very rare. The priest to parishioner ratio was 1:100,000. If a priest simply administered the sacraments to members of his parish, he would be kept busy. Teaching them was a largely impossible task.
I’m encouraged by Benedict XVI’s establishment of a Council for New Evangelization. In doing so, he announced: “In this perspective, I have decided to create a new organism, in the form of pontifical council, with the specific task of promoting a renewed evangelization in countries where the first proclamation of the faith already resounded, and where Churches are present of ancient foundation, but which are going through a progressive secularization of society and a sort of ‘eclipse of the sense of God,’ which constitutes a challenge to find the appropriate means to propose again the perennial truth of the Gospel of Christ.”
May God bless their efforts. Although Roman Catholic ecclesiology would keep me from joining the church of Rome, I’ve been greatly encouraged by the fresh movement of the Spirit within the church in the last 50 years or so. The Reformation isn’t over and may never be, but millions of people around the world live in genuine Christian faith as a result of the work of the Roman Catholic Church.
Nice review, but accesibilist so is not a word.
BW3
That is an interesting comment, Ben. I’d like to know what you dislike about it. I appropriated the term from comments on the subject by Bill Craig. His suggestion of the term made eminent sense to me. Inclusivism has become problematic because not everyone defines the term the same way. I think that “accessibilism” captures the main point of the position, namely, that salvation is accessible to everyone. No one lacks potentially saving revelation. That seems much more descriptive to me than “inclusivism.”
I’ve identified six types of accessibilism in the literature: 6. Postmortem evangelism accessibilism: 1) post-mortem evangelism accessibilism; 2) Molinist accessibilism; 3) special revelation accessibilism; 4) general revelation accessibilism; 5) “Biblical universalistic” accessibilism; and 6) world religions accessibilism.
Do you have in mind a term you think would serve the purpose better? If so, please share it with us.
The word order of the “so” is incorrect, at least in my area and generation. It should read, “Nice review, but accesibilist is so not a word.” This latter word order is also confirmed by a corpus search of English. [sorry, it's the pedant in me]
cheers
Speaking as one who has come to have faith that Jesus fails to save no one, that Jesus truly is the savior of all humanity, especially (not only) we who currently believe, I’d say that Piper and I agree on this question – As It Is Stated! I believe that “conscious faith in Jesus is necessary for salvation!” We differ though on the time-frame in which one can come to faith in Jesus. His unstated “assumption” is that such faith must be realized before one physically dies. I do not believe that such is the case; rather, I believe that people come to faith in Christ when God reveals to them His love and grace (the gospel) in our current realm/existence or the realm/existance to come. And thus ultimately all shall be reconciled to God. All shall come to have faith in Jesus. And every knee shall bow in adoration and every tongue shall confess one’s allegiance to Christ.
I believe that faith is the result of, the byproduct of the revelation of God. When Jesus appeared to Paul, faith was generated in Paul’s heart and he was saved. Do we “choose” to have faith? I don’t believe we do. Rather, I believe that faith is a byproduct of God revealing to us His Love for us. We love Him because He first loved us and revealed Himself to us.
We were created for relationship with God and are like fish out of the water when we’re not in relationship with God. Why would we think that any rational person would reject a relationship with God (eternal life)! And if the person is not rational, maybe we should trust in the forgiveness of God as revealed in Jesus’ statement, “Father, forgive them because they do not know what they are doing!” Is there anything that can separate us from the love of God? Does Jesus fail to save any whom He loves? And does not Jesus love all of humanity!