Answer:
I think there’s a way to look at the exclusivity of Christianity in a more humble way, which I think Billy was trying to do, without compromising the grace only stance of Scripture. As soon as you go outside of Christ, you go outside of Grace. You gut the good news of it’s goodness.
So why would these prominent Christian leaders seem to want to literally curse all people everywhere with the extremely BAD news that maybe somehow if they’re good enough they can maybe get to heaven without knowing Christ? Why not the simple and GOOD news that through Christ we all can be good enough despite the horrible condemnation brought by our inability to be virtuous enough?
The reason these teachers may go here is because of the uncomfortable reality that some people simply don’t get to hear about Christ. OK. That’s the only real problem… geography and communication, but not the plan itself! The plan is good through and through. The plan is grace through and through. The plan is rescue and help for all, everyone gets in the same way, everyone can meet God’s standard. The door is open to all. Nothing unfair about that. If you reject that through conscious choice, then that’s your prerogative.Christians engage in persuasion evangelism in a context of a free market place of ideas and people accept or reject. If they reject, we don’t like it, we grieve it, but we let people live with it. Again, nothing unfair about the plan so far.
So I really get uncomfortable when people like Schuler or Graham start to talk about virtuous pagans as members of the Body of Christ because of their virtue. This is not Biblical Christianity. But you don’t have to go there to resolve our problems about God’s fairness and the unreached. A much better question to ask is this: can they be members of the body of Christ because of humble penitent faith and be saved by mercy, (not their virtue), though they never knew the name of Christ? This is the better question.
It has no more firm answers perhaps, but it takes this conversation out of territory that compromises what makes Christianity unique and puts it back into territory of GRACE and leaves up to God the judgments about the specific content of saving faith. What I think some church leaders are doing, in an effort to be humble about the unreached, is they are making a special category of salvation. This kills Christian uniqueness, it makes God out to be a liar and it’s bad news for millions of people. Better news is that everyone who is saved, is saved by faith, “whether Jew or Gentile. There IS NO DIFFERENCE.”
If we accept this GOOD NEWS about God’s amazing mercy for humanity, then the ONLY remaining question about fairness is simply regarding geography. Is God, the Almighty, confined to geography? Is God completely flummoxed by the problem of people without a Bible and without an historical testimony to his Christ – his means of grace? Is God left handcuffed by the limitations of the globe and history such that whole swaths of humanity are cut out of his salvation offer by something completely outside their control?
Or can God not arrange for some help to those outside the stream historically and geographically of his grace Message and revelations? Sure he can. And he has (read Acts 10). And he will continue to. So those who don’t stand directly in the way of the message so that the natural course of their life is to hear it, can still hear it. Through dreams and visions for example… God is not physically limited as we are to airplanes and radio towers. So I’m a little disturbed by where Billy Graham went when he declared people outside of Christendom to be part of the body of Christ, “who love Christ”. He said this under the heading of “not wanting to play God anymore”.
But for most of his ministry, he has not playing God… he was merely being a faithful witness to what God said was his open door plan. Yes, I’m of the same opinion that we don’t know the heart of people so judgments about specific souls is inappropriate. But we don’t go redefining Christendom and suddenly drawing into it all these virulent anti-Christians ESPECIALLY when we make the basis for their inclusion the fact that they are virtuous! No, no, no, a thousand times, no! They are “saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ just as we were”, or not at all. If the pagans are saved by virtue, then what of us who do have the Word of knowledge? Can’t we get in that same plan B? If there are two plans, then God is a liar. He’s lied through his work in Jesus Christ. Because that work ASSUMED explicitly and implicitly that we needed a ransom payment for sin, an atoning Lamb, an innocent Substitute and spiritual rebirth. So suddenly, the pagans don’t need that? We, the Church are the great unwashed, the ugly, needy masses that needed debt payment for sin, and rebirth, but not the noble savage and all non-Christians? They get in on their own merits? Again, a thousand no’s! By grace or not at all!
The better question that keeps us humble but retains Christian uniqueness is simply this: Can we be saved THROUGH Christ without knowing ABOUT Christ? That is most definitely possible, simply because we know that Old Testament saints were saved through Christ without knowing Christ. And not just the devout Jews, but some devout pagans too – Melchizedek and Job. So I can agree with Billy when we expand our category of who MIGHT be saved, IF we retain the same means of salvation: THROUGH GRACE BY FAITH. Can a person have faith, without a certain content of knowledge? Well again what we can KNOW from the biblical record is this: that if a person responds in faith to the knowledge of revelation they ALREADY HAVE, they will be given more knowledge. And the great biblical example of this, Cornelius, shows him finally getting the FULL content of knowledge of the gospel to which he responds in faith and is saved.
What we can say with LESS certainty is whether a person can respond in faith to the revelation they have – reversing the Romans 1 pattern of suppressing general revelation – and be saved without the visit from Peter after the vision has been given. What if there is no Peter to come and give the faith filled pagan the FULL message? We either have to assume that God ALWAYS sends a Peter to EVERY faith filled pagan in any religious context, in any geographic location around the globe… OR we assume that the initial response of faith to God’s existence, even a desire for relationship and a pleading for mercy for sin, will be all the content needed and this faith will connect them to the saving benefits of a Christ they will never know on this earth, but whom they will welcome as their Lord and Master in eternity.
I think this second situation is POSSIBLE, but UNLIKELY. And I say this based on the Romans 10 pattern – “how will they know unless there is someone to preach to them, and how will they preach unless they are sent?” Does Paul exclude the possibility of saving faith unless they actually HEAR the full content of Christ’s Revelation? He might be in 10:17, “faith comes by hearing”. And in fact, we shouldn’t really seek to soften the force of this, since if we really think it is not only POSSIBLE but LIKELY that an unreached pagan can be saved apart from the message of Christ being presented to him, then we probably do him a disservice to come to him! Why? Because “not everyone welcomes this good news.” So why would Paul urge the sending and the going if the pagan was better off without hearing? Again, we’re back to this one known: that when a man responds well to general revelation, God CAN bring him special revelation. If he can for Cornelius, then he can for every non-Christian in every country in every era of history.
Has he? We can’t say yes or no – we don’t have that kind of knowledge. We have to humbly say we don’t know. We don’t know the machinations of every heart, the words whispered there, the lies believed or rejected, the visions given in fitful sleeps, the convictions borne or rejected, the knowledge gained by revelation and prophecy or even missionary activity that spread Christ’s Message unknown to the students of history… nor can we know if God will count as “hearing” and gift “faith” to those who listen to the “good dreams” and myths inside their own cultural stream that anticipate the special revelation of God’s Christ. None of this can we know. We can know this: that whatever partnerships God has with us in this operation of being good news spreaders, he is able to plant the seed and direct our operation to nurture any place on the globe that that seed takes root. And we rest finally in this truth which Abraham noted when in the middle of his own angst about unreached peoples: “the Judge of all the Earth will do right” when it comes to processing the unreached. He will be as gracious as it is RIGHT to be and as stern as it is RIGHT to be and all the earth and every power above or below it, will say, “he is proved RIGHT when he speaks and will prevail when he judges.”
Rick Thiessen
Senior Pastor
Allen Creek Community Church
