Dr. Todd Miles was one of my professors at Western Seminary, and I enjoyed his classes a great deal. I took two theology classes and an ethics class from Todd, and all three classes taught me things I'm using in ministry and in life today. The ethics class was both terrifying and insightful. Todd is also the author of A God of Many Understandings?: The Gospel and Theology of Religions, a book about the way in which Christians should interact with people of different faith systems within our culture. This is, in fact, one of the things that Todd addresses in this blog post, talking about the Great Commission and how it relates to pluralism. I found this post refreshing and challenging and I trust you will as well. Enjoy.
Each day on my way to work I drive by a billboard
advertisement for a local university celebrating its commitment to inclusivity.
Though it could be construed as a statement regarding its admissions
requirements (Send us an application! Everybody gets in! Nothing exclusive
about us!), it is more likely that the university is attempting, in a vague
way, to tap into postmodernity’s commitment to tolerance and its rejection of
exclusivity.
We live in a pluralistic world, full of different kinds of
people, different kinds of philosophies, and different kinds of religions. Of course,
ever since shortly after Adam’s fall, pluralism of this sort has been the way
things are, so nothing much has changed in a descriptive sense. What has
changed is that pluralism in our day does not just describe the way things are;
pluralism describes the way things ought to be. When pluralism is cherished and
prescribed, then tolerance necessarily rises to the top of the virtue list.
Christianity’s claim that Jesus Christ is the exclusive way to right
reconciliation with God does not sit well with the prevailing cultural
sensibilities.
In today’s world, to be exclusive, particularly about
religion, is to be rude, narrow, and close-minded, and most likely (in a
guilty-until-proven-innocent fashion) judgmental and bigoted.
Therefore, we are told that truth claims, especially
religious truth claims, ought to be humble. Better yet, people ought to have
choices and our pluralistic world delivers. We are presented with a seemingly
endless array of options, an ideological smorgasbord, where we can sample and select
religious entrees according to taste and preference, without fear of cultural
reprisal. To be told that your religious conviction is wrong is largely
equivalent to being told that your dessert choice is wrong. Claiming that Jesus
is the only way to salvation (however salvation might be construed) is like arguing
that Derby Pie (chocolate-saturated pecan pie - need I say more?) is the only
legitimate way to after-dinner paradise.
Such thinking comprises the ambient cultural atmosphere. It
is the very air that we breathe. It creeps easily into the church’s thinking. Then,
when we are confronted with the enormous numbers of people who die without
believing or even hearing the gospel, our minds begin to race: Doesn’t God
desire that all be saved (1 Tim 2:4)? Isn’t it true that the Lord does not wish
that any should perish (2 Pet 3:9)? And then we consider the trumping question
of anti-exclusivity: What about those who, through no fault of their own, have
never heard the gospel? The response in some Christian circles is to speculate
on the possibility of salvation apart from hearing and believing the gospel or
the possibility of salvation being mediated through other religions.
Christians must recognize that such questions, while being
difficult, are not off-limits. We need solid, biblically-faithful responses to
those questions. But we also have to recognize the force of the climate in
which we do our thinking. Our postmodern context demands that we answer questions
such as these in an “exclusively inclusivistic” fashion. It is our duty to
think through those questions, but it is equally our duty to think through them
faithfully. Jesus Christ demands that we take every thought captive in
obedience to him (2 Cor 10:4-5) and warns us about being conformed to the
pattern or mold of this world (Rom 12:2). Our thinking is to be guided by his
Word and here are four reasons to think that pluralism (all roads lead to God) and
its sensibilities lack biblical warrant. Or to say it a different way, here are
four broad reasons to think twice about jettisoning Jesus’ exclusive claims.
Explicit Biblical
Teaching
When we read the gospels, we are confronted with the reality
that Jesus was not at all concerned with being tolerant of false ideas about
God and if he were speaking in our context he would not bow to the idol of
political correctness. Living and teaching in a day and age that valued
religious pluralism (the Greco-Roman world) as much as ours, Jesus taught that
“repentance and forgiveness of sins was to be proclaimed in his name to all the
nations (Luke 24:47), that unless one honored the Son it was impossible to
honor God (John 5:23-26), and that he was the way, the truth and the life and that
no one could come to the Father apart from him (John 14:6). Jesus’ first disciples understood that
teaching and were bold in propagating the message that “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven
given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). These explicit teachings (and that was just a
representative sampling) must be considered in any Christian’s zeal to
construct the possibility of salvation outside of belief in Jesus Christ.
Jesus was Not Hopeful
That Most Would Be Saved
On a couple occasions, Jesus spoke to the destiny of the
majority and he was not optimistic. In the Sermon on the Mount he concluded, “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and
the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.
For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who
find it are few” (Matt 7:13-14). In a parallel passage in Luke, Jesus was
asked, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” Jesus replied, “Strive to enter
through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not
be able” (Luke 13:23-24). If Jesus was not hopeful, I see little purpose
in dreaming up scenarios by which the unevangelized are saved.
The Story of
Scripture
The Scriptures present a God who brooks no rivals and who is
not impressed with human machinations to either approach him or approximate
him. It is God who, following the sin of Adam and Eve, promises that a child
would one day be born who would crush the deceiver and rescue his people (Gen
3:15). It is God who, of his own choosing, selects an unworthy man through whom
to display grace to the nations and initiate his plan for redemption (Abraham
in Genesis 12). It is God who, time and again judges his own people and the
nations for failing to honor him (e.g., Deut 28: 15-68; Isa 40-48; Acts 5:1-11).
It is God who, “in the fullness of time,
. . . sent forth his Son, born of woman,
born under the law, to redeem those who
were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4). And
it is God who calls all nations everywhere to repent, “because he has fixed a
day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has
appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the
dead” (Acts 17:30-31). Contemplation of the possibilities of salvation apart
from faith in Christ must be consistent with the biblical storyline.
Unfaithful
Implications of Speculation
Christ gave a clear mandate to preach the good news of the
Kingdom (e.g., Matt 28:18-20; Acts 1:8). The apostles were faithful to that
commission and made it their goal to take the gospel to the whole world (Acts
10:42). Paul’s life ambition was to preach the gospel wherever Christ had not
already been named (Rom 15:21). What happens to missionary zeal when Christians
labor to gather support for a shared optimism concerning the fate of the
unevangelized? Admittedly, negative implications of a position are not
defeaters of that position. But when those implications repudiate the logic of
mission and the explicit commands to evangelize the nations, then one has to
wonder about the legitimacy of that position. Rather than philosophizing and
theologizing about the possibilities of salvation apart from faith in Christ,
we would do better to recognize that the biblical response to the question of
“What about those who have never heard?” is a forceful call: “Go tell them!”
A mutual friend suggested I check out Nathan Foster's 
, 
To say that 
