07.25
Whether or not you believe this really depends on your theology. Specifically, what does your religion say about how you get saved. Catholocism would definitely require active practicing of it to be saved. Since the sacraments are pretty much required, specifically “Last Rites”, I don’t see how you could be saved withouth such participation.
Most orthodox protestant denominations of Christianity take the requirement for salvation directly from Christ himself. He says in John 3:14,15 “But even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” There is nothing about the practice of any religion in that statement. If you believe that Jesus was the Son of God, that’s it. Without getting into too much theology, I’ll just say that I think it’s probably a safe bet to just take Jesus at his word. I’m on safe ground with that.
The question then becomes: What about people, like “tribes in the rain forest”, who will never know or hear about who Jesus is? This time we will have to get theological since this is a response to one of the claims of protestant orthodoxy directly. The Christian claim goes like this:
- Man exists in a natural state of rebellion against god (sin nature)
- Justice requires this sin to be paid for (judgement)
- Therefore, God judges the unbeliever based on his actions and adherence to God’s law (condemnation)
- But judges the believer using Jesus sinless life as a substitute to satisfy the law (salvation)
In this scenario, those who don’t hear about Jesus aren’t treated unjustly. They are under condemnation because they sinned, not because they don’t know who Jesus is. Jesus is the route of salvation for those who are already condemned of their own accord. Imagine for a moment that the 9/11 attackers had not died in the attacks and were all caught by police. They are swiftly found quilty by a jury and await sentencing. Now the judge in this case was merciful and wanted to take the punishment for the attackers on their behalf, but only if they repented of their actions before sentencing day. Two of them heard about his offer and accepted his substitutionary gift. One of the other attackers had heard about this also but said he would rather die than repent before this American infidel judge. The rest of the attackers didn’t hear about the judges offer. Now, you can see what is going on here. Where is the injustice? Their isn’t any injustice.
The problem in people’s mind is not so much about injustice though. We all know that if their is a God we are surely to be guilty before him. The problem people have is with God’s benevolence. We think that if God is loving, he wouldn’t send anyone to eternal punishment without a cut and dried chance to choose first. But we know that not everyone will have that chance, so this leads some to the belief in what is known as the “middle-knowledge” argument.
Middle-knowledge is the view that God knows what the outcome of all conterfactuals will be and bases his election of those who are saved on that knowledge. A counterfactual is a proposition like “If Dave was a preacher instead of a System Administrator, his church would probably be empty.” Any time you think of a set of circumstances that might lead to a possible outcome, that is a counterfactual proposition. If God then knows the answer to the counterfactual proposition, “If Zulu tribe A in the rain forest were to hear about Jesus then ____ would happen.”, he would base his salvation of those individuals on what he knows the outcome to be. If he knows 4 people in the tribe would believe, he would save those 4 people.
That’s because it is cop-out BS, but I wouldn’t put it so harshly. A lot of Christians adhere to some type of a middle-knowledge view not to win an argument, but because our sensibilities about God’s benevolence almost demand that we believe it. I’m sympathetic to this, but I just don’t think it’s necessary. God is just, which is demonstrated by his punishment of sin. He is also loving, which is demonstrated by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. I don’t see a lack of universal availability of forgiveness as diminishing that benevolence at all.
He’s exactly right. And that’s why religion has become so absurdly irrelevant in some areas of modern life. It makes a mockery of the sacrifices of the church fathers, reformers, and missionaries who died for a reason. Wishy-washy doctrine doesn’t get you killed. Doctrine gets you killed when it hits other people in the heart, and that doesn’t happen when their is no right or wrong and God is nothing but love. Anyway, more to come later.
P.S. – I know that some middle-knowledge proponents probably choked on their lunch when I gave the above explanation of it, but I just don’t want to get into the whole idea of how evangelism plays in to it and all that for now. I think it all boils down basically to how I described it anyway. I’m definitely open to other arguments though.
