Punctum Saliens

Ok, where was I? Oh, that’s right … in the middle of a magic trick. How do you let God be 100% just and at the same time don’t let him condemn people who could never have heard about Jesus? Easy as pie. Simply say along with Josh McDowell: “No one will be condemned for not ever hearing of Jesus Christ” [Answers to Tough Questions, p. 121]. Cool! So, everyone who doesn’t hear will be in heaven, right? Uh … no. In the next sentence, McDowell says, “That person will be condemned for violating his own moral standard.” Hmmm. I have two problems with this.

First, “his own moral standard?” I thought everything depended on violating God’s Law. Or not believing in Jesus Christ. What does a person’s moral standard have to do with anything? Talk about a sliding scale. So, a totally immoral person will get into Heaven while a very moral — although not infallible — person won’t?

Second, even though this sounds like “they” have a chance this is really only another rationalization. If everyone is a sinner at birth then, by definition, no one will be able to live up to any moral standard worthy of being called a moral standard.

So far, “they” don’t have much of a chance. But, a few pages earlier McDowell says,

“Although the Scriptures never explicitly teach that someone who has never heard of Jesus can be saved, we do believe it infers this. We do believe that every person will have an opportunity to repent, and that God will not exclude anyone because he happened to be born at the wrong place and at the wrong time.” (Emphasis mine)

Ah, despite the inference status of this statement, this does sound a little more optimistic. If everyone has an opportunity to repent, then those in Hell really do make the choice. Does he quote chapter and verse to back up this belief? Well, the next sentence quotes John 7:17

If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself.

I didn’t really get what the New American Standard Bible (quoted above) was trying to say so I looked at a couple other versions and here is the New International Version:

If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.

All the other more “common language” versions seemed to agree that Jesus was talking about someone who is hearing or has heard the teachings of Jesus. And I don’t see how anyone could hear his teachings without hearing about Jesus. So, how does this back up the inference? It sounds to me like just another rationalization to make Christians feel good about their all-loving God.

Even though there is no teaching to back up this inference, there is an example in Acts 10 which may set some precedent for it. Cornelius was a very religious man who prayed to God and asked God to reveal himself to him. God sent an angel and told Cornelius to send for the Apostle Peter who came and preached Jesus Christ and Cornelius was saved. This is all very good, but if people were constantly knocking on Christians’ doors saying “God told so-and-so to send for you. Please come preach Jesus to him,” don’t you think we’d hear about it?

But this doesn’t stop some Christians from continuing to believe it. They are so sure that if anyone is sincere enough that God will reveal himself to her so she can be saved. This means that Siddhartha Gautama (aka The Buddha), for example, was not sincere enough in his search. The seven years he spent learning from every different type of teacher he could find was not sincere enough. Being close to death from starvation and sitting for three days and three nights (sound a little familiar??) under a bodhi tree was not sincere enough. Obviously not because God would have sent someone to preach to him if he was sincere.

Kind of makes you wonder if anyone has a chance.

But now I want to return to a thought I mentioned in the last post. If the fate of all the souls in the world depend on hearing about Jesus, doesn’t this put the fate of all these souls on the hands of every Christian? Obviously yes, but you’ll have to stay tuned to see what else I have to say about it …