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SOME REMAINING QUESTIONS

Several important questions related to inclusivism remain to be discussed. I begin with a question about Clark Pinnock.

IS PINNOCK REALLY AN INCLUSIVIST?

To see the point here, let us recall that an inclusivist is someone who believes that while Christ’s redemptive work is ontologically necessary for salvation, it is not epistemologically necessary. This means that if anyone in any religious system is saved, it will be because of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. But receiving God’s salvation does not depend upon knowing about Jesus or believing in him.

While Pinnock claims to be an inclusivist, he is also known for his defense of a theory that is logically incompatible with inclusivism. Pinnock supports a position known as “post-mortem evangelism.” This is the view that everyone who has not had a chance to hear the gospel in this life (before physical death) will be presented with the gospel after death. 1

Generally speaking, people who teach post-mortem evangelism (or P.M.E. for brevity’s sake) are not really inclusivists. They are actually exclusivists who believe that a conscious act of faith in Jesus Christ really is necessary for salvation. The reason that they teach that humans have a chance at salvation after death is obvious. If God is going to save people who have not heard the gospel in this life and if explicit faith in Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation, then only one conclusion is possible: 2 The unevangelized must have an opportunity to hear the gospel after death.

The reason that the doctrine of P.M.E. is inconsistent with inclusivism should be apparent. Inclusivists teach that explicit faith in Jesus Christ is not necessary for salvation; advocates of P.M.E. believe that it is. Inclusivists hold that general revelation can bring people to salvation; advocates of P.M.E. do not. 3

How can Pinnock hope to present himself as both an inclusivist and an exclusivist who believes in P.M.E.? 4 Is he really an inconsistent exclusivist, perhaps? Or is he a confused inclusivist? Or is he indifferent to this issue because he “knows” that God will save millions of people who have never heard the gospel. But as we saw in chapter 9, not even God can know this, according to Pinnock. Does Pinnock, then, know something that God cannot know? Is he simply guessing or hoping? Something seems amiss in all this.

WHAT ABOUT SALVATION AFTER DEATH?

We would hope that eventually Pinnock will dispel the confusion, but in the meantime we should look at post-mortem evangelism, the theory that helps to create the uncertainty. Does the doctrine of P.M.E. make sense theologically? Does it have support from Scripture?

John Sanders 5 locates the theory of P.M.E. in nonevangelicals such as Joseph Leckie 6 and Yale Professor George Lindbeck, 7 but he also finds the view defended by more evangelical thinkers such as Gabriel Fackre, 8 Donald Bloesch, 9 and John Lawson. 10 The position is widely taught in Southern Baptist colleges and seminaries.

Evangelicals who teach post-mortem salvation see the theory supported by three other beliefs: (1) No one will be saved apart from conscious knowledge of and explicit faith in Jesus; (2) the reason that any person is lost is his or her conscious rejection of Christ; and (3) God makes salvation accessible to all human beings. Note that anyone who accepts these three claims must reject the inclusivist’s confidence in the salvific efficacy of general revelation. Even those who believe that general revelation provides enough knowledge to save admit that it does not include any information about Jesus’ redemptive work. Because advocates of P.M.E. insist that conscious faith in Jesus is necessary for salvation, it seems best to view these people as exclusivists rather than inclusivists. And since it is obvious that the universal accessibility of salvation (proposition 3) does not occur within the lifetimes of large numbers of people, the information about the gospel that is necessary for salvation can only come after death.

Defenders of post-mortem salvation deny that they are teaching a doctrine of a “second chance” because, they argue, the people who hear the gospel after death are those who never had a first chance. Hence, this view must be distinguished from a form of universalism that teaches that all humans, including those who have rejected the gospel in this life, will have a second chance after death. Indeed, most of the proponents of this latter view believe that God will grant the unrepentant a third chance and a fourth chance and so on, until finally God’s love triumphs over all human recalcitrance. 11

One theological reason often given for supporting P.M.E. is that it provides a helpful way of understanding the salvation of dead infants and mental incompetents. Advocates of P.M.E. ask whether people who die in infancy are really saved without explicit faith in Christ. Would it not solve a lot of problems to say that they are given a chance to accept Christ after death? Of course, this approach would raise the possibility that many dead infants and mental incompetents might reject Christ after death.

It seems best to reserve judgment on this matter until we see how plausible the case for P.M.E. is. The appeal to the case of dead infants, after all, is not really an argument. It simply points to one possible benefit from accepting a belief in salvation after death.

The obvious question then becomes, What does Scripture teach about the subject? Advocates of P.M.E. appeal to five major texts: 1 Peter 3:18 – 4:6; Acts 17:31; 2 Timothy 4:8; 1 John 4:17; and John 5:25 – 29. I believe that the last four of these texts really do not speak at all to the subject, and we need not discuss them here. However, I encourage readers to study them. But the long passage in 1 Peter is quite a different matter. First Peter 3:18 – 21 states the following:

For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God.

In the verses that follow this passage, Peter talks about how Christians reject the wicked lifestyle of the unsaved. Because of this rejection, Christians suffer abuse from the unsaved, who one day will stand before the Judge of the living and the dead. Then Peter writes, “For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to men in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit” (1 Peter 4:6).

It is customary for advocates of P.M.E. to link 1 Peter 4:6 with the reference to Noah’s ark and “the spirits in prison.” They view the latter as an allusion to Christ’s descent into hell (a concept that is also debated among evangelicals). But such a tactic is very weak exegetically; it fails to recognize that 1 Peter 4:1 – 5 slips totally alien subject matter into the middle of what P.M.E. supporters treat as one unbroken line of thought. I believe this exegesis is faulty, because we are left to ask what these five verses are doing in the middle of a discussion on a different subject. Those five verses make it extremely unlikely that 1 Peter 4:6 and its reference to preaching to those now dead are somehow connected with the immediately preceding passage, 3:18 – 21.

First Peter 4:6 may well be a reference to the common biblical practice of describing Christians as people who are now “dead” to—that is, oblivious to—certain things in their past. In Galatians 2:20 Paul describes himself as “crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” In Romans 6:2, Paul states that Christians have died to sin. Peter may well be saying something similar in 1 Peter 4:6. Of course, it is also possible that Peter is only telling us at this early stage in the life of the church that many to whom the gospel came have since died physically, even though they are still alive and conscious in the spirit.

My point is that the post-mortem salvation reading of 1 Peter 4:6 is neither the only nor the most plausible interpretation. Wise Christians never base an important doctrine, especially one that is controversial, on a single, highly debatable passage of Scripture. If this approach were applied by P.M.E. advocates to 1 Corinthians 15:29, it would result in Christians being urged to follow a policy of baptizing living people as proxies for the unbaptized dead. It is clear, then, that there are many reasons not to think that 1 Peter 4:6 teaches that humans will have opportunity to hear the gospel after death.

What about 1 Peter 3:19 – 20, which states that through the Spirit Christ also “went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah”? What does this mean? This verse is often injected into the debate over P.M.E. because they understand it to say that between his death and resurrection, Jesus descended into the lower world and evangelized some group of people already dead. The reason this view does not work is that verse 20 appears to describe the recipients of Christ’s message as unbelievers who lived during the time of Noah. Did Jesus preach to these unbelievers back before the Flood? But why would he preach only to unbelievers in that situation? Why did he not also preach to the believing Patriarchs of the Old Testament who could have profited from what Jesus had to say? Why did he preach only before the Flood? All these questions suggest that the interpretation under consideration is badly off track.

There is a good reason why 1 Peter 3 cannot teach any kind of post-mortem evangelism. The context finds Peter urging Christians to continue faithful in their evangelism and witnessing in spite of persecution. It would make no sense for Peter to say this and at the same time tell the persecuted Christians that the unbelievers behind all their suffering will have a second chance to be saved after they die. Sanders responds that Peter’s words are designed not to encourage Christians to worldly living. 12 But I think Sanders misses the point. Why would Peter urge Christians to persist in their witness to Christ if these same unbelievers will be given a chance to be saved after they die? If Peter intended to acknowledge P.M.E. anywhere in this book, this would be the place to do so. The fact that Peter does not strongly suggests that post-mortem evangelism was not relevant to his message.

What, then, was Peter talking about? Some understand 1 Peter 3 to say that Christ preached to the lost while he was alive and that those lost people were figuratively in prison; and that Christ’s preaching to the lost was analogous to Noah’s preaching to the lost before the Flood. Still another interpretation suggests that 1 Peter 3:19 speaks of how the Spirit of Christ (1 Peter 1:11) spoke through Noah (2 Peter 2:5) to men and women who are now in a prison of judgment. They were judged for their disobedience and are suffering the consequences. Through Noah’s preaching, they were exposed to the light and rejected it. In neither of these more plausible interpretations is there the slightest indication of any later chance at salvation.

Several other issues remain. First, advocates of P.M.E. believe that the reason people are lost is that they reject Christ. Once this is assumed, it seems to follow that unevangelized people who have never had a chance to reject or accept Christ must be given that opportunity after death. But the assumption is false. The reason why people are lost is clearly described in Romans 3: “There is no one righteous, not even one…All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (vv. 10, 23). Rejecting Christ is not a condition for being lost. We are lost already (Ps. 51:5; Eph. 2:1 – 3).

Second, according to Pinnock, the decisions that beneficiaries of post-mortem evangelism make after death will reflect the direction they were heading during their lives. Sanders seems to agree, explaining that “those who exercised the faith principle in life will continue in faith and love Christ, while those who rejected God’s revelation and mercy in life will continue to resist and hate God. In other words, people will tend to be confirmed in the direction they were already heading.” 13 However, there may be surprising exceptions, Sanders continues, in that people who hated God in this life may choose to believe after post-mortem evangelization.

My question is, Is there any basis in Scripture for this kind of speculation? I am disturbed that the inclusivists we have cited in this book engage in sheer speculation and then use their conjectures as the basis for conclusions that have enormous consequences for Christian faith and practice. I will return to this point in the next chapter.

It is also worth noting that Pinnock believes that the fate of the evangelized (that is, Christian believers) may be fixed at death. 14 If that were not so, we could end up with a theology in which unbelievers in this life end up saved and believers in this life end up lost!

Third, I am concerned as to which of the two positions we are considering must bear the burden of proof. I believe that quite obviously the burden of proof falls upon the shoulders of those who contend that there can be salvation after death. In the last chapter I invite readers to search through the book of Acts for any sign of inclusivist convictions among the early Christians. I believe the search is futile, equally so if we were seeking indications of a commitment to post-mortem evangelism.

While the early Christian writing known as 2 Clement is not part of the New Testament, it nonetheless reflects the thinking of Christians during the church’s first century. Second Clement 8:3 states that “after we have gone out of the world, no further power of confessing or repenting will there belong to us.” It is possible that this assertion became necessary because some, as the first century drew to a close, may have raised the possibility of salvation after death. I suggest also that comments as clear as Second Clement 8:3 do not appear in the New Testament because they simply were not needed among the members of a community whose every action recognized that physical death marked the boundary of human salvific opportunity.

If I insist that the burden of proof rests on the advocates of P.M.E., it is because they must overcome the clear implication of numerous New Testament passages that teach that God’s judgment will be based on events, deeds, and commitments occurring in this life. Matthew 7:13 – 23 comes to mind in this connection. In verses 13 – 14 Jesus warns his listeners of the broad road and wide gate that lead to destruction, and he urges them to be among the few that enter the narrow gate and follow the narrow road that leads to life. There is no place for a salvific opportunity after death in these words.

Jesus issues a warning about false prophets who come in sheep’s clothing (Matt. 7:15 – 20) and concludes by saying, “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” The emphasis is, once again, upon what occurs during an earthly lifetime.

In Matthew 7:21 – 23 Jesus speaks of those who will come to him at the judgment saying, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?” In response, Jesus reports that he will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” Once again, post-mortem judgment is based upon pre-mortem conditions. The point likewise appears in Matthew 7:24 – 27, Jesus’ well-known story of the men who built their respective houses on rock and sand.

We do well also to study Jesus’ parables in Matthew 13. Explaining the parable of the weeds (vs. 24 – 30, 36 – 43), Jesus states, “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil.” The sin and evil referred to here must pertain to things done prior to one’s death. There are no qualifications in this or other passages; there are no hints of exceptions arising from events after death. A similar point appears in Matthew 24:41 – 46.

In Revelation 20:11 – 15, John records a vision of the judgment before the Great White Throne, when the books were to be opened and “The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books” (v. 12). Again, the clear message is that judgment has our human lives on earth in view.

In all these passages and more, I contend, one simple point stands out and is taken for granted: Physical death marks the boundary of human opportunity. Anyone who wishes to argue that Jesus and the authors of the New Testament believed otherwise must shoulder the burden of proof. Given the serious implications of a belief in post-mortem salvation for evangelism and missions, the total silence of Scripture regarding opportunities after death should trouble advocates of P.M.E. The highly suspect theological arguments offered in support of the position have already been examined in this chapter and have been found to be broken reeds, unable to support the weight of the theory. We noted, for example, that it simply is not true that humans are lost solely because they have rejected Christ. In an earlier chapter we discussed the doctrine of the universal accessibility of salvation, a necessary presupposition for those holding to post-mortem salvation. For the record, some evangelical inclusivists such as John Sanders reject the doctrine. 15

By way of conclusion let me cite Hebrews 9:27: “man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.” Many proponents of P.M.E. claim that this verse is the only New Testament text that even comes close to declaring death as the boundary of human opportunity. 16 Such a claim is simplistic, once we recognize the extent to which the many New Testament passages about divine judgment presuppose this fact. Nothing in Hebrews 9:27 teaches that a person’s judgment follows immediately upon his death. Rather, the verse gives the order as death first and judgment second. The judgment comes after death, but nothing is said about how long after death it occurs. Once that is settled, it is clear that the intent of the verse is to show that the judgment of each human reflects that person’s standing with God at the moment of death.

WHAT ABOUT OTHER RELIGIONS?

Many Christians will have no difficulty recognizing some elements of truth in non-Christian religions even though they may find the central beliefs of each system to be incompatible with revealed truth. Bruce Demarest explains that the Christian conviction that Christ is the only Savior

does not deny that good exists in other religions, or that the non-Christian faiths do not embody valid spiritual insights. On the basis of universal general revelation rendered meaningful by common grace, the non-Christian religions…possess elements of truth about God and man. But Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, fulfills and transcends the valid insights possessed by all the non-Christian systems. 17

Demarest rejects thinking that sees only errors and lies in non-Christian religions. “On the basis of God’s universal general revelation and common enabling grace,” he continues,

undisputed truths about God, man, and sin lie embedded to varying degrees in the non-Christian religions. In addition to elements of truth, the great religions of the world frequently display a sensitivity to the spiritual dimension of life, a persistence in devotion, a readiness to sacrifice, and sundry virtues both personal (gentleness, serenity of temper) and social (concern for the poor, nonviolence). But in spite of these positive features, natural man, operating within the context of natural religion and lacking special revelation, possesses a fundamentally false understanding of spiritual truth. 18

Demarest concludes, “The world’s non-Christian religions, then, are essentially false, but with glimpses of truth afforded by general revelation. It needs to be emphasized that the light they do possess is too fragmentary and distorted to illumine the path that leads to a saving knowledge of God.” 19

Paul used moments of truth in the thinking of his pagan audience on Mars Hill as points of personal and cultural contact during his evangelistic message (Acts 17). We can and often should do the same in our dealings with people from other religions. But this hardly means that such people are already saved or will be saved in the future because of the non-Christian beliefs. Paul did not tell the Athenians that the unknown God they worshiped could save; rather, he told them about the only true God and his Son, the only Savior. None of those who continued to follow their old convictions were saved, while those who believed Paul were saved (Acts 17:34).

WHAT ABOUT HELL?

The topic of hell has been in the background throughout this book. Both pluralists and inclusivists use the doctrine for emotional appeal in the debate over exclusivism, 20 and sometimes this is exploited. Regrettably, critics of exclusivism do not always play fair; they ignore important differences among exclusivists, cite only the extreme positions, and rely on misrepresentations and distortions.

A typical distortion is the charge that in the exclusivist view, God gives large numbers of the human race absolutely no chance to be saved and therefore those same unfortunate souls will spend eternity being tortured by a vengeful God. Some, for example, speak of “a cruel God serving as a sort of proprietor of hell” and of a “God who delights in the torture of sinners.” 21

Roger Nicole objects to the first point, that God gives many people no chance to be saved. In Nicole’s view, all that is required for an offer or invitation to be well-meant is the granting of the promised benefit upon satisfaction of whatever conditions are attached to the gift. According to Nicole, many exclusivists posit “a universal divine intention to save on the condition of repentance and faith. That is to say, if only human beings would repent and believe, they will be saved.” 22

Of course, many exclusivists reject a literal understanding of hell. For example, J. P. Moreland and Gary Habermas write:

We do not accept the idea that hell is a place where God actively tortures people forever and ever. There will indeed be everlasting, conscious, mental and physical torment in various degrees according to the lives people have lived here on earth. But the essence of that torment is relational in nature: the banishment from heaven and all it stands for. Mental and physical anguish result from the sorrow and shame of the judgment of being forever relationally excluded from God, heaven, and so forth. It is not due to God himself inflicting torture. 23

According to William Crockett, even John Calvin and Martin Luther rejected strictly literal accounts of hell. 24 As Crockett understands the doctrine, “On the Judgment Day the wicked are separated from the righteous like chaff from grain, and they are carried far from the beauty and glory of God into a land of shadows where they contemplate what might have been. They are in the true sense of the word, lost forever.” 25 Crockett identifies a number of contemporary evangelicals as holding similar views on the subject. 26

It is clear that every member of our fallen and rebellious species deserves God’s judgment. The various accounts of this judgment in Scripture help us understand how serious this entire matter is. Inclusivists know all too well how many conscientious exclusivists have wrestled with the details of this judgment, and it is shameful that some paint all exclusivists with the same brush of extreme literalism. Such tactics could be construed as a smokescreen for a weak defense of their position. 27

CONCLUSION

The issues examined in this chapter raise even more doubts about inclusivism. The inclusivists’ attack on exclusivism is more strident and the support for their views is much weaker than many realize upon their first encounter with these issues. Especially deplorable is the way inclusivists distort exclusivist thinking about important topics such as the doctrine of divine judgment. The more carefully inclusivism is studied, the weaker it looks.