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chapter_eight.docxChapter Eight
INCLUSIVISM AND THEOLOGY
In chapters 8 and 9 I examine most of the arguments, both theological and biblical, that inclusivists offer in support of their position. The theological arguments come first for pedagogical reasons, that is, my considerations introduce information that help our understanding of inclusivism. But despite the separation of chapters, no strict segregation of the biblical and theological issues is really possible. Once we raise the theological issues, we must take a hard look at what the Scriptures say about them.
GENERAL REVELATION
Christian thinkers distinguish between special and general revelation. Special revelation is illustrated by the unique disclosures that God made to such people as Abraham, Moses, and Paul. This kind of revelation is “special” because God gave it to particular people at particular times and places. This revelation also has a special function, namely, to bring human beings to a saving relationship with the triune God. Because some of the content of special revelation that God gave to select individuals like David and Peter was not preserved and recorded, that material is not accessible to us today. Special revelation that is accessible has been preserved, recorded, and inscripturated in the Bible. Since Jesus Christ is God incarnate, his life and teachings also constitute special revelation. But again, our access to that important information is limited to what has been preserved in Scripture.
General revelation, as its name implies, is revelation that God makes available to all human beings. Psalm 19 tells us that the heavens declare the glory of God. The last half of Romans 1 reports that humans can come to know certain things about the Creator God through his creation. General revelation also gives humans general moral understanding so that certain kinds of conduct are known to be wrong.
A key assumption of inclusivism is the belief that general revelation is sufficient to bring people to salvation. Inclusivists have to say this. They insist that salvation is accessible to all humans, including the millions who lack any contact with special revelation. Because special revelation is not necessary for salvation in such cases, inclusivists are forced to find a salvific role in a general revelation that all humans can apprehend. Clark Pinnock states that “the knowledge of God is not limited to places where biblical revelation has penetrated.” 1 According to John Sanders, inclusivists “believe that appropriation of salvific grace is mediated through general revelation and God’s providential workings in human history.” 2
Sanders insists that the word gospel has a wider meaning than simply the good news about Jesus. The gospel may also include light that is available to the unevangelized through general revelation. One obvious problem with such a claim is its apparent conflict with Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15:3 – 4, where Paul seems to unfold the meaning of “gospel” in terms of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. Sanders’s answer to this difficulty amounts to a watering down of Paul’s words. He claims that “Paul does not say one has to know these facts [about Christ’s death and resurrection] to be saved, only that he had proclaimed this message to the Corinthians.” 3
To protect their particular view of general revelation, inclusivists have to relativize the content of Paul’s gospel to different people, places, and times. This condition should give evangelicals second thoughts about embracing inclusivism. As we saw with pluralism, so with inclusivism: Ideas have consequences. Is the death and resurrection of Jesus essential to the gospel, or is the gospel instead an assortment of things that can assume many different forms? As we will discover, Sanders’s response to 1 Corinthians 15:3 – 4 is typical of how inclusivists handle most biblical passages that appear to conflict with important inclusivist convictions. In many cases, what Christians have historically regarded as a significant New Testament passage testifying to Christ’s exclusive role as Savior is watered down so that it becomes a trivial or unimportant utterance.
Does Romans 1 – 3 Contradict the Inclusivist View of General Revelation?
Paul begins his letter to the Romans by explaining that one reason why all humans are condemned is that they have resisted the message of general revelation. Romans 1:18 – 19 states, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.” Even though God has made important information available to all humans through general revelation, Paul teaches, that revelation has failed to bring about salvation. “There is no one righteous, not even one,” Paul writes in Romans 3:10. “[A]ll have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). Romans 1 – 3 seems clearly to contradict the inclusivist belief that people in non-Christian religions may be saved by responding in faith to the content of general revelation. 4 Paul makes it plain that general revelation does not and cannot save.
Bruce Demarest summarizes what is generally taken to be Paul’s teaching:
We have seen that through universal general revelation God has disclosed to people His existence, perfections, and moral demands. But we have also seen that sinful man consistently repudiates this elemental knowledge of God and perverts it into unspeakable idolatry. Thus, in practice, general revelation serves only to condemn man, not to save him. However, the God of grace and mercy did not abandon the sinner in his state of self-willed rebellion. God has broken into man’s sindarkened existence with a special supernatural revelation that holds out the offer of spiritual healing. By this fresh revelatory initiative, God offers Himself to man not only as a power to be encountered but as a Person to be known in a fellowship of trust and commitment. 5
Paul’s teaching that no human being succeeds in living up to the light of general revelation implies that general revelation cannot save; special revelation is required for that result. In response to this point Sanders appeals to the fact that “Paul also says that all the Jews, who had special revelation, have sinned and that none of them seeks God either.” In other words, the exclusivist appeal to Romans 1 – 3 “appears to lead to the conclusion that since none of us seeks God, no matter what sort of revelation we have, all people are damned to hell.” 6
Sanders’s argument is not entirely clear. He reasons that because exclusivists, on the basis of Paul’s writings, reject general revelation as a vehicle of salvation, they should also disdain special revelation because it failed to bring every Jew to saving faith. This is a very weak argument. The exclusivist believes that while general revelation saves no one, God’s special revelation has been effectual in saving many Jews, including Paul. Furthermore, Scripture does affirm the salvific sufficiency of special revelation when coupled with the effectual work of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 2). Paul’s words in Romans 2:17 – 24 do not give general revelation enhanced status as an instrument of salvation. Romans 1 – 3 still contradicts the inclusivist view of general revelation.
Alleged Proof Texts for the Inclusivist Position
Inclusivists need some clear and strong support from Scripture to ground their belief in the salvific function of general revelation. John Sanders finds that support in Romans 10:18: “Did they not hear? Of course they did. ‘Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.’” The key part of the verse for inclusivists is Paul’s quotation from Psalm 19:4. Admittedly, these words are a poetical allusion to the power of general revelation. Who can forget the first verse of that Psalm and its message: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands”?
However, inclusivists overreach when they call Paul’s use of Psalm 19:4 an endorsement of a salvific role for general revelation. New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce explains, “It is unnecessary to suppose that Paul regarded Psalm xix. 4 as a prediction of the world-wide dissemination of the gospel; he means that the dissemination of the gospel is becoming as world-wide as the light of the heavenly bodies.” 7 If the inclusivist view were true, it would bring Paul’s entire argument in that chapter to an abrupt halt. Even the most superficial reading of the context makes it clear that Paul is talking about the indispensability of special revelation for salvation and the urgency of human preachers to carry the gospel to the world. Romans 10 is exalting special, not general, revelation.
D. Bruce Lockerbie interprets Romans 2:14 – 16 in a way that seems to support inclusivism. For him, this passage teaches that some Gentiles do acknowledge God and obey his will. Such people will be saved on judgment day, but not because they lived sinless lives. On the contrary, these Gentiles will also have fallen short of the high standard set for them by God’s moral law. These saved Gentiles, Lockerbie explains, “will be devout pagans who, in the presence of sin, have been ashamed, have cried out in spiritual anguish, and confessed to whatever representation of the Holy Spirit they acknowledge.” 8 The problem is, Romans 2:14 – 16 says nothing about pagan Gentiles who seek salvation because of guilty consciences, and it certainly says nothing about their search being successful. The passage only talks about those times when some unevangelized people experience guilt because of their failure to meet the standards of the moral law that God has placed within all human beings. Romans 2:14 – 16 does not support the inclusivist view of general revelation.
The final text inclusivists appeal to regarding the salvific sufficiency of general revelation is John 1:9, which describes Jesus Christ, the Logos of God, as “The true light that gives light to every man.” It is not at all clear that this verse has anything directly to do with salvation. As I have argued at length in two other books, the verse describes God’s role in endowing humans with rationality and the ability to attain knowledge. 9 Nothing in John 1:9 gives inclusivists the help they need.
Where, then, is the clear, unambiguous biblical support inclusivists need for their belief in the salvific function of general revelation? The simple answer is that there is none. The inclusivist’s view of general revelation is assumed without biblical warrant and is then used to compromise other important biblical teachings such as Paul’s identification of Christ’s death and resurrection as an essential component of the gospel. So although inclusivists want desperately to believe that general revelation can bring humans to salvation, they fail to show that Scripture teaches this view and fail to recognize a conflict with Paul’s teaching in Romans 1 – 3.
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN CHRISTIANS AND BELIEVERS
Throughout this chapter I argue that accepting inclusivism logically commits a person to a number of other positions that many people who are otherwise attracted to inclusivism find problematic. The inclusivist view of general revelation is only one of them. We turn now to another set of issues, all related to the fact that inclusivists are compelled by the logic of their theory to make a distinction between Christians and believers. John Sanders defines believers “as all those who are saved because they have faith in God.” 10 A Christian, by contrast, is “a believer who knows about and participates in the work of Jesus Christ.” 11 This means that in heaven we will encounter both Christian and non-Christian believers. This view is inherent in inclusivism.
This theory is supported by three claims that are inseparable from inclusivism: (1) a distinctively inclusivist understanding of the nature of faith; (2) a recognition that the many Old Testament believers will be in heaven, even though they were not Christian believers. (Hence, inclusivists argue, the Bible itself makes a distinction between Christians and believers. Because the Old Testament establishes the principle that there will be believers in heaven who are not Christians, the possibility exists of there being other believers in heaven who are not Christians, namely, unevangelized believers from non-Christian religions.); (3) an appeal to an alleged Old Testament tradition of so-called holy pagans.
Let us deal now with these three claims and then return to the question of whether a distinction between believers and Christians is defensible.
THE INCLUSIVIST UNDERSTANDING OF FAITH
While inclusivists believe that an act of faith is necessary for salvation, they insist that this faith need not have Jesus as its direct object. Many Christians will find this view strange. Consider the following quotations from John Sanders:
[P]eople can receive the gift of salvation without knowing the giver or the precise nature of the gift. 12
“Saving faith”…does not necessitate knowledge of Christ in this life. God’s gracious activity is wider than the arena of special revelation. God will accept into his kingdom those who repent and trust him even if they know nothing of Jesus. 13
[I]nclusivism denies that Jesus must be the object of saving faith. 14
Inclusivists obviously believe the salvation of unevangelized people depends on how they respond to the light they have. In ways that inclusivists find difficult to explain, the light of general revelation brings many of the unevangelized to a trust in the true God, a trust that has nothing to do with Jesus Christ, of whom they are uninformed.
According to Clark Pinnock, people are saved by what he calls “the faith principle.” That is, the saved must satisfy the conditions of Hebrews 11:6: “Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” It is faith or trust that saves, not knowledge. But does Hebrews 11:6 exhaust the content of faith? Obviously one precondition for saving faith is believing that God exists. Just as certainly, believers are expected to “seek” God, although other passages in the Bible will have to give this “seeking” the proper content. This much we can learn from Hebrews 11:6.
But I do not think that is all there is to saving faith. Surely this faith in the existence of God must be directed to the true God, not some idol or pagan substitute. The New Testament clearly states that humans who would seek God must approach him through the one and only mediator, Jesus Christ (1 Tim. 2:15). The “Faith Principle” that Pinnock formulates from Hebrews 11:6 is incomplete; it distorts and dilutes the New Testament’s picture of saving faith.
What About the Content of Saving Faith?
Clark Pinnock declares that “According to the Bible, people are saved by faith, not by the content of their theology.” 15 An inclusivist has no choice but to make this claim. If God saves people solely on the basis of “faith,” irrespective of their access to special revelation, the gospel, and Jesus Christ, then an inclusivist’s view of saving faith will be radically different from the traditional evangelical view. Apart from having the true God as its object, the key factor about saving faith in inclusivist terms is its subjective aspect. Note these statements by Pinnock:
“Faith in God is what saves, not possessing certain minimum information.” 16
“A person is saved by faith, even if the content of faith is deficient (and whose is not?). The Bible does not teach that one must confess the name of Jesus to be saved.” 17
“One does not have to be conscious of the work of Christ done on one’s behalf in order to benefit from that work. The issue God cares about is the direction of the heart, not the content of theology.” 18
When I was growing up in Ohio, I frequently heard liberal pastors proclaim sentiments identical to those now expressed by evangelical inclusivists: “It’s not what you believe that matters, it’s your sincerity that counts.” 19
Pinnock remains an evangelical. But it bears notice how perilously close he comes in his rhetoric to language used by theological liberals, and this language is a result of his defense of inclusivism. Upon reflection, does not an evangelical inclusivist have to acknowledge that what people believe (the objective content) is as important as how they believe (the subjective intensity)? John Sanders seems to recognize this when he affirms “that some degree of cognitive information is essential for saving faith.” Unfortunately, Sanders then retreats in adding “that the Scriptures do not set out the precise amount of information that is required.” 20 While we might not all agree on the precise amount of knowledge in view, the information that Scripture does provide far exceeds the requirements of the inclusivists. Most Christians would find the needed information in New Testament texts like John 14:6, Acts 4:12, and Romans 10:9 – 10. But as we will see in chapter 9, inclusivists direct much effort toward dismantling the usual evangelical thinking about these texts. Once again it appears that the inclusivist agenda is dictated by a need to disavow anything in Scripture that seems to support exclusivism. For that reason, inclusivists hold a view of faith that is inevitably deficient in theological content.
Even Pinnock relents a bit regarding the objective content to faith. He writes, “This is not to imply the unimportance of making historical facts about Jesus known everywhere. It is essential to make them known in order to clarify God’s saving purposes for humanity and to motivate individuals to make their commitment to God in Christ.” 21 Inclusivism entails believing that some unevangelized people will nevertheless be saved, but as Pinnock’s comment reveals, this does not absolve inclusivists from the duty to practice evangelism. But then, in the next sentence, Pinnock adds that “we cannot reasonably suppose that a failure of evangelization that affects many millions would leave them completely bereft of any access to God.” 22
So the picture is clear: Inclusivists hold that faith can save people even though it is deficient in theological content, yet there is no place in Scripture that asserts this. Indeed, Scripture teaches the precise opposite. While I agree that people are not saved simply by assenting to discrete information, I nevertheless maintain that saving faith has an awareness of such information as one of its necessary conditions (Rom. 10:9 – 10). I believe it is reckless, dangerous, and unbiblical to lead people to think that the preaching of the gospel (which I insist must contain specifics about the person and work of Christ) and personal faith in Jesus are not necessary for salvation. If we do not accept the inclusivist definition of faith, we cannot very well accept the rest of the inclusivist system.
INCLUSIVISM AND OLD TESTAMENT BELIEVERS
The second plank in the inclusivist system, after the definition of faith, is the distinction between Christians and believers. John Sanders introduces this topic as follows: “If knowledge of Christ is necessary for salvation then how do we explain the salvation of the Old Testament believers whose knowledge was quite limited concerning the Messiah, but, who yet were justified by faith in God’s Word?” 23 Once we accept Sanders’s point as a premise, we encounter Clark Pinnock’s conclusion: “A person who is informationally premessianic, whether living in ancient or modern times, is in exactly the same spiritual situation.” 24 Many Christians find this reasoning persuasive, but I believe an examination will show that they have been too hasty to accept this belief.
The inclusivist argument depends totally on the claim that Old Testament Jewish believers are in precisely the same spiritual situation as present-day non-Christians who nonetheless believe “in God.” That expression is in quotation marks because we have to see whether faith as inclusivists define it is directed toward the right object, the true God of Scripture.
The relevant question, I believe, is whether both groups of people really can be regarded the same way. Are there significant differences that might break down the inclusivist’s analogy? For one thing, there is the biblical teaching that Old and New Testament believers share a covenantal relationship to God that is grounded on special revelation. The New Testament refers repeatedly to the continuity between Old and New Testament saints (Rom. 1:1 – 2; 11:11 – 24; Gal. 3:8; 6:16; Phil. 3:3, 7, 9; Heb. 11). The Old Testament sacrificial system foreshadowed the one, final sacrifice offered up by Jesus Christ (Heb. 9 – 10). The New Testament reports that the Old Testament saints looked forward to a mediator who would die (John 5:46; 8:56; 1 Peter 1:10 – 12) and how the gospel was preached to Abraham (Gal. 3:6). While there is much about these references that we do not fully understand, we cannot ignore what we see in order to maintain an analogy between Old Testament saints and unevangelized, twentieth-century believers. How can Old Testament believers who had a significant relationship to special revelation and whose faith was tied to symbols and practices that looked forward to Christ provide warrant for treating unevangelized moderns as saved believers? If there is an argument here, I fail to see it.
“HOLY PAGANS”
Inclusivists argue that there is an important Old Testament tradition of “holy pagans.” These holy pagans were believing Gentiles who lived outside God’s covenant with Israel. They included Melchizedek, Job, the Midian priest Jethro, Naaman, the Roman centurion Cornelius, and even the Magi, who, as Pinnock writes, “came from the East to worship the Christ child and who…likely were pagan astrologers (Matthew 2:1 – 12).” 25
The person in this list who receives the most attention is Melchizedek, whom Pinnock describes as a “pagan” priest who blessed Abram (Gen. 14:19) and whom the New Testament treats as a symbol of Christ’s high priestly work (Heb. 7). According to Pinnock, Abram’s meeting with Melchizedek in Genesis 14 “makes the point that religious experience may be valid outside Judaism and Christianity.” 26 Elsewhere Pinnock suggests that the reason that exclusivists “often refuse to recognize genuine piety outside the church is because they persist in ignoring the scriptural truth symbolized by Melchizedek, and this creates in them a brittleness, rigidity, and narrowness in the presence of non-Christian people.” 27
Once again, let us reflect on this. Even though Genesis identifies Melchizedek as a priest of the most high God, it is not indicated that he is a pagan. 28 Melchizedek worshiped and served Yahweh as certainly as Abram did. Melchizedek fails as an example of genuine piety among pagans.
Nor are references to Naaman any more successful. Naaman (2 Kings 5) was clearly a pagan who then confessed his faith in Yahweh (2 Kings 5:15). John Sanders points out that Naaman then requested forgiveness for the times he would enter the temple of the pagan god Rimmon after his return to Syria. Sanders takes this to mean that Naaman continued to have some unorthodox beliefs mixed with his “belief in God.” 29 I rather think that Naaman, as an important figure in his society, was occasionally required to participate in civil ceremonies, to his own embarrassment. Either way, nothing in the text suggests that Naaman continued to believe in the pagan deity.
The Magi who sought out the young child Jesus were in all likelihood pagan astrologers. But inclusivists such as Sanders fail to follow up on this and fail to mention that they were in fact seeking Jesus. 30 The example proves nothing.
We have reason to doubt that some in the inclusivists’ list of holy pagans (such as Abimelech and Balaam) were saved. Few of the people cited impress us as examples of redeemed believers.
One final line of argument must be noted in this connection. Inclusivists often produce Old Testament texts that mention God’s desire to save Gentiles. But these passages are irrelevant to the matter at hand. None of them suggests that these Gentiles could come to experience God’s salvation in any way apart from means provided by God in special revelation.
MORE ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN CHRISTIANS AND BELIEVERS
The foregoing discussion dealt with the support inclusivists marshal for their distinction between Christians and saved, non-Christian believers. What I find is that inclusivists appeal to a type of faith that is deficient in cognitive content and devoid of any necessary reference to Christ. This kind of faith lacks contact with biblical faith and leads to severely antibiblical consequences. The attempt to link Old Testament believers and possible believers in non-Christian religions collapses entirely because of its inattention to the crucial differences between the two groups.
Attempts to find holy pagans in the Old Testament and then link them to holy pagans in non-Christian religions fails either because the inclusivists’ biblical examples were not holy or were no longer pagans. Gentile worshipers of Yahweh in the Old Testament prove by and large to be rather poor role models for the inclusivists’ non-Christian believers.
We can always, of course, engage in long debates about the faith of genuine believers (Jewish and Gentile) during the centuries before Christ. But fishing in those waters hardly yields the results that inclusivists need to support their theory. Coupled with the weaknesses of their appeal to general revelation as a medium of salvation, the theological case for their position looks even less impressive.
A PIVOTAL INCLUSIVIST ARGUMENT
One of the most important theological arguments for inclusivism is summarized in one sentence by Clark Pinnock: “If God really loves the whole world and desires everyone to be saved, it follows logically that everyone must have access to salvation.” 31 How can this seemingly innocuous statement occupy a central place in inclusivist thinking? The answer to the question lies in the second of the two axioms that serve as the foundation for inclusivist thinking. The universality axiom states that God is obliged to give every person a chance to accept or reject his salvation. A loving God must provide every human with access to salvation.
But Pinnock’s argument fails for two reasons: (1) It contradicts other elements of his Arminian theology, and (2) it contains a logical fallacy.
PINNOCK AND THE UNIVERSALITY AXIOM
Theologians familiar with Pinnock’s other writings know that he denies God’s perfect and complete knowledge of future human actions. 32 If a human being acts as a result of free choice, according to Pinnock, God cannot know about this act before it happens. This means that a great deal of the future is unknowable to God and therefore what theologians call God’s omniscience is severely limited in Pinnock’s theology. Will the Cleveland Indians ever win another pennant? Pinnock’s God doesn’t have a clue. Will some truck driver freely choose to do something dangerous with his vehicle and kill me in the process? Pinnock’s God can only wait and see.
But Pinnock’s thought does more than limit God’s knowledge; it also severely restricts God’s power. Reflect a bit on the assumptions at work when we pray. Petitionary prayer is always a request that God exercise his power with regard to certain future states of affairs. But if the future is unknowable to God, it is hard to see what praying can accomplish. How can God know what to do or how to do it if the future is unknown to him? Pinnock’s limitation of divine omniscience not only has serious implications for prayer, but also seems inconsistent with the doctrine of providence.
How does this relate to Pinnock’s one-sentence argument for the universality axiom? Pinnock announces what God is going to do for every unevangelized person in the world. God will (future tense) make access to his salvation available to all. I do not see how Pinnock’s God can possibly do that, given his ignorance about the innumerable people and events and relationships involved. We all know how human beings are conceived. Presumably most of those conceptions occur as the result of voluntary human behavior, that is, the kind of future human acts that Pinnock’s God cannot know. It would seem to follow that Pinnock’s God cannot then know what human beings will exist in the future.
Much of the access that these humans will have to salvation would, it seems, depend upon the voluntary actions of themselves and others. But Pinnock’s God must be largely ignorant about all this as well. Once again, we see how ideas have consequences. At this point, Pinnock’s theories about God’s inability to know future human actions clashes with the universality axiom. Something has to give.
Pinnock’s rejection of divine foreknowledge is part of a larger set of beliefs known as Arminianism. 33 As an Arminian, Pinnock believes that the salvation of every human being is ultimately up to that person. God can coax and plead with the sinner; the Holy Spirit can do his best; Christ has already died for the sinner. But the sinner will never experience salvation until he or she decides to believe. Salvation is a consequence of humans participating with God. God’s part was providing a Savior; the human part involves the use of free will to accept what God has done. All this is related to why Pinnock and many other Arminians deny God’s perfect knowledge of future human actions; they wrongly think that divine foreknowledge conflicts with human freedom and that this condition conflicts with the basic premise of their Arminianism. 34
But let us link together these disparate beliefs of Pinnock. For the sake of argument, let us assume that (1) God knows absolutely nothing about future human actions that are voluntary, and (2) the salvation of every individual rests ultimately on that person’s using his or her ability and free will to choose God. What consequences follow from all this?
For one thing, there is absolutely no way for God today to know that even one person will come to saving faith in the future. More important, there is the realization that while Jesus was undergoing the agony of the Cross, there was no way God could know if Christ’s atonement would bear fruit in even one believer. It is ironic how Pinnock’s passion for universal accessibility is compatible with a universal rejection of God’s offer of salvation. While God sent his Son to be the Savior of a vast multitude of people, as far as God knew, Jesus could have turned out to be the Savior of no one!
Theologian J. I. Packer argues that theories like Pinnock’s alter the content of Christian theology so dramatically as to create what Packer calls a new gospel. 35 According to Packer, the central reference of the old gospel was God. Its purpose was “always to give glory to God. It was always and essentially a proclamation of Divine sovereignty in mercy and judgment, a summons to bow down and worship the mighty Lord on whom man depends for all good, both in nature and in grace.” 36 But the center of reference for the new gospel is not God, but man. The purpose of this new gospel is to help people feel better, not teach them to worship God. The subject of the new gospel is not God’s sovereign ways with man, but the help God offers to men.
Packer points out that the advocates of the new gospel
appeal to men as if they had all the ability to receive Christ at any time; [they] speak of His redeeming work as if He had done no more by dying than make it possible for us to save ourselves by believing; [they] speak of God’s love as if it were no more than a general willingness to receive any who will turn and trust; and [they] depict the Father and the Son, not as sovereignly active in drawing sinners to themselves, but as waiting in quiet impotence “at the door of our hearts” for us to let them in. 37
The old gospel grounds salvation on the work of God while the new gospel makes salvation dependent on a work of man. The old gospel views faith as an integral part of God’s gift of salvation while the new gospel sees faith as man’s role in salvation. The old gospel gives all the praise to God while the newer one divides the glory between man and God. The new gospel refuses to take sin and human depravity very seriously. Mankind in the new gospel is never so hopeless that we should count someone out in regard to salvation.
The new gospel, Packer continues, “compels us to misunderstand the significance of the gracious invitations of Christ in the gospel…[We] now have to read them, not as expressions of the tender patience of a mighty sovereign, but as the pathetic pleadings of an impotent desire; and so the enthroned Lord is suddenly metamorphosed into a weak, futile figure tapping forlornly at the door of the human heart, which He is powerless to open.” 38 Packer judges such thinking to be “a shameful dishonour to the Christ of the New Testament.” 39 Moreover, the new gospel “in effect denies our dependence on God when it comes to vital decisions, takes us out of His hand, tells us that we are, after all, what sin taught us to think we were—masters of our fate, captain of our souls—and so undermines the very foundation of man’s religious relationship with His Maker.” 40
Theologian Roger Nicole is troubled by how close the new gospel comes to resembling the ancient heresy of Pelagianism 41 by speaking “as if man had a right to come into the presence of God and enter into account with him, as if God had some obligation to deal with all people in the same way. The one thing God owes us is judgment. We ought to marvel at the fact that instead of confining us all to judgment and damnation, God in his mercy has been pleased to make plans to save a great multitude.” 42
I began this section by arguing that Pinnock’s belief in a universally accessible salvation clashes logically with his denial of God’s perfect knowledge of the future. It then became necessary to show why—for Pinnock at least—his severe restrictions on God’s knowledge and power were part of a larger package of beliefs (Arminianism). Earlier we looked at some consequences of inclusivist ideas. In this section I have noted some consequences of Arminianism. There is irony in the way careless talk about love, compassion, and universal accessibility can quickly produce shaky theological thinking.
Pinnock’s Fallacy
Even if we ignore Pinnock’s eccentric thinking about God’s knowledge and power, there is another problem with his argument: his conclusion does not follow from his premises. Let us look at the argument in somewhat shortened form: “If an all-loving God desires the salvation of every single human being, then he will grant every single human being access to salvation.”
Even if we grant the truth of the first clause (that God desires the salvation of every human being), does the second follow (that God necessarily will give every human access to that salvation)? Many evangelical Arminians would answer no. As these noninclusivist Arminians see things, God may desire the salvation of all men, but getting the gospel (as stated in 1 Corinthians 15:3 – 4) to those people is our task. Whether all these noninclusivist Arminians are correct about all the details in their theology is less important right now than the fact that they help us see the flaw in Pinnock’s reasoning. God could conceivably desire all kinds of things to happen and still allow those things not to happen for some good reason. Whether or not he chooses to reveal that reason to us, it is still true that the inclusivists’ universality axiom does not follow from Pinnock’s premises.
ONE FINAL ARGUMENT
The inclusivists’ search for a theological justification for their position involves one more problem. Because of the powerful emotional appeal this final claim has for many people, it may prove to be the inclusivists’ most successful argument.
Inclusivists note that almost all Christian exclusivists allow that children who die in infancy as well as people who are mentally incompetent are included within the circle of God’s saving grace. I share that belief on the basis of 2 Samuel 12:22 – 23 and other biblical considerations. Inclusivists charge that this belief creates a kind of slippery slope for exclusivists. If babies who die in infancy and mental incompetents will be in heaven without ever coming to explicit faith in Christ, then to be consistent they should grant the same privilege to “innocent” people outside the bounds of Christianity who also die without ever hearing the gospel. 43 If God’s salvific will encompasses babies and the mentally incompetent who die unevangelized, why should his saving will not also include all those who have never heard of Christ?
The question we must ask in evaluating this argument is whether it ignores important differences between infants and mental incompetents on the one hand and unevangelized people on the other hand who are mature enough to be held accountable for their resistance to the light of general revelation. Because there are indeed differences, I fail to see how God’s gracious act in the case of infants provides for similar action in the case of mature people who intentionally sin.
Inclusivists also err by suggesting that the only reason people are lost is because they have rejected Christ. But rejecting Jesus is not the only reason that men and women are lost. There are no innocent human beings. Our problems do not result from the fact that we do not know God. They flow from our failure to assent to the light that we have. Bruce Demarest explains the message of Romans 1, “[S]inful man consistently repudiates this elemental knowledge of God [found in general revelation] and perverts it into unspeakable idolatry.” 44
Having dealt with a number of theological issues in this chapter, let us turn next to a new set of issues that we encounter in the inclusivists’ appeal to the Bible.
