{"id":10871,"date":"2010-11-26T05:12:31","date_gmt":"2010-11-26T11:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/jesuscreed\/?p=10871"},"modified":"2010-11-26T11:44:42","modified_gmt":"2010-11-26T17:44:42","slug":"those-who-never-hear-the-gospel-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2010\/11\/26\/those-who-never-hear-the-gospel-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Those who never hear the gospel 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This post is the second one in a series by David Opderbeck.<\/p>\n

This is the second post in my series on\u00a0Gavin D\u2019Costa, Christianity and World Religions: Disputed Questions in the Theology of Religions<\/a>\"\"<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 The first post is here<\/a>.\u00a0 In this post I\u2019ll jump to the last chapter of the book to consider D\u2019Costa\u2019s proposal regarding the salvation of the unevangelized.<\/p>\n

What do you think of the Limbo of the Just?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a Roman Catholic theologian, D\u2019Costa is constrained by the doctrine of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salas<\/em> \u2013 \u201cThere is no salvation outside the Church.\u201d\u00a0 Catholics mean by this that the visible Roman Church is the only vehicle of salvation, although after Vatican II this is broadly interpreted.\u00a0\u00a0 Protestants are not constrained by this doctrine in exactly the same way.\u00a0\u00a0 A central tenet of the Reformation is that the Church is an \u201cinvisible\u201d body based on the inner life of faith.\u00a0 Nevertheless, traditional Protestant teaching continues to hold that salvation is inaccessible Extra Ecclesiam<\/em> \u2013 that those who are saved must belong to the Church, albeit the Church reinterpreted as an invisible body based on inward faith.<\/p>\n

For some Christians in earlier centuries, Extra Ecclesiam <\/em>was perhaps not as vexing a problem as it appears to us today.\u00a0 Many assumed that Christendom covered most of humanity.\u00a0 D\u2019Costa recognizes the problem Extra Ecclesiam<\/em> presents today:\u00a0 \u201cthe assumption . . . that the entire world is confronted with the gospel . . . is no longer tenable as we now know that, throughout Christian history, there have been billions of people and cultures who have not heard the Gospel.\u201d\u00a0 He resolves this problem with reference to the \u201cLimbo of the Just\u201d and with an important move concerning the nature of participation in Christ.<\/p>\n

The \u201cLimbo of the Just\u201d is a concept found in very early Christian tradition.\u00a0 It is rooted in the \u201cdescent\u201d passage of 1 Peter 3:18-4:6.\u00a0 The early Church Fathers recognized that many apparently good and just people had lived before <\/em>Christ, including the Old Testament saints and some of the Greek philosophers whom they admired.\u00a0 Some of these early Christian thinkers supposed that the preaching of the gospel to the dead described in 1 Peter 4:6 (\u201cfor this reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead\u201d<\/em>) referred to the opportunity for these pre-Christian people to recognize that the good towards which they strived in life was fulfilled in Christ.\u00a0 The time spent by Old Testament saints and \u201choly pagans\u201d in the Limbo of the Just allowed them to expurgate their sins in preparation for coming to saving faith in Christ at the time of Christ\u2019s descent.<\/p>\n

For the Early Fathers, the Limbo of the Just was emptied on Holy Saturday.\u00a0 It was not an option for people living after the Resurrection, although the concept of an Infant\u2019s Limbo eventually was developed to deal with the problem of unbaptized infants.\u00a0 However, D\u2019Costa lists three reasons why the \u201cLimbo of the Just\u201d tradition might provide resources for the contemporary question of the unevangelized:\u00a0 (1) it explains how some people who did not know Christ in life could come to know him and his Church; (2) it unites the ontological experience of living a life marked by truth and the good with the epistemological status of knowing Christ as the source of all that is true and good; and (3) it provides for the fact that even those who are in some ways true and good before epistemically knowing Christ may require some degree of purification for sins committed in the flesh.<\/p>\n

D\u2019Costa does not suggest a simple restatement of the Limbo of the Just tradition with all of its ancient speculative cosmological baggage.\u00a0 He notes that \u201cwe must not imagine this solution as a celestial waiting room under the earth, but a conceptual theological datum based on the tradition that provides an answer uniting the ontological and epistemological to explain the case of [the salvation of the unevangelized.\u201d\u00a0 This dense statement points towards another key to D\u2019Costa\u2019s proposal:\u00a0\u00a0 a participatory ontology in which temporal, situated human beings participate in the life of the eternal, cosmic Christ. This participatory ontology is one way in which D\u2019Costa explains how the descent of Christ on Holy Saturday can be effective for unevangelized people living in the dispensation of the Church, after the Resurrection.<\/p>\n

More on participatory ontology in my next post.\u00a0 For now:\u00a0 Can we make use of a theological method in which traditions not explicitly mentioned in scripture inform our thinking?\u00a0 Does that fact that the early Church Fathers wrestled with the problem of \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cjust\u201d pre-Christian people, and devised a solution, help in your wrestling with problems such as the fate of the unevangelized?\u00a0 Are you surprised at how the first few generations of Christians interpreted 1 Peter 3-4?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is the second one in a series by David Opderbeck. This is the second post in my series on\u00a0Gavin D\u2019Costa, Christianity and World Religions: Disputed Questions in the Theology of Religions.\u00a0 The first post is here.\u00a0 In this post I\u2019ll jump to the last chapter of the book to consider D\u2019Costa\u2019s proposal regarding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1325],"tags":[2082,2347,325],"class_list":["post-10871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religions","tag-david-opderbeck","tag-gavin-dcosta","tag-world-religions"],"yoast_head":"\nThose who never hear the gospel 2<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This post is the second one in a series by David Opderbeck. 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